After closing out March with a dip and tepid recovery, net flows to Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have kicked off the week in the red. Investments were negative yesterday with outflows of $85.7 million, data from BitMEX Research shows.

Last Thursday, for the third consecutive day in a row, more than $100 million entered the popular new  funds, bringing the total for the week to $845 million. 

The week before that, however, all the Bitcoin tracking funds experienced outflows, blamed on “investor hesitancy” following a dip in crypto prices. 

Grayscale's flagship product is its Bitcoin Trust. Image: Shutterstock.

Bitcoin ETFs Lose Ground for First Time in Weeks, Weighed Down by Grayscale

Along with a post-peak Bitcoin price drop, the red-hot market for spot Bitcoin ETFs is apparently cooling as well. Bitcoin now is trading well below its 2021 all-time high of $69,044 despite flipping the market cap of silver and skyrocketing to new levels above $73,000 per coin last week. One reason? The massive amounts of capital still flowing out of Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). The new exchange-traded fund (ETF) evolved from an essentially closed-end fund that had been available for years...

NewsMarkets
2 min read
Mat Di Salvo

But yesterday, cash continued to flow into all the funds—except one: Graycale’s GBTC, which experienced $302.6 million in outflows. The fund was one of 11 Bitcoin ETFs given the green light by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to start trading in January. 

Of all the products, GBTC has been the only one investors have consistently drawn cash out from. 

This is largely down to bankrupt crypto companies redeeming shares and investors moving to funds with lower fees—Grayscale’s entry has the highest fees of all the funds. 

Although the outflows were slowing down, yesterday showed that the carnage isn’t over just yet. 

As a result, the price of Bitcoin is down today: the asset is now trading at $65,348 per coin, CoinGecko data shows—a 24-hour dip of nearly 6%. In mid-March, the asset hit a new all-time high of nearly $74,000. 

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.

Daily Debrief Newsletter

Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.