Bitcoin ETFs Add Billions of Dollars Ahead of US Election

Crypto investment funds have continued to break records—even as the price of Bitcoin and demand for ETFs has become more sensitive to polls and perception as the U.S. election nears. 

Last week, $2.2 billion hit funds giving investors exposure to digital coins and tokens, data from CoinShares shows. The European asset manager tracks digital asset funds all over the world. 

Most of that money came from American investors wanting to gain exposure to BTC via spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), CoinShares said. The funds, approved in January, give Americans the ability to buy shares that track the price of Bitcoin. 

Now, a total of $29.2 billion has been plugged into all crypto funds year-to-date—a new record. Last week, the Bitcoin ETFs collectively surpassed a milestone of 1 million BTC in assets between them.

“We believe euphoria around the prospect of a Republican victory was the likely reason for these inflows as they were in the first few days of last week,” CoinShares said in a report.

“As polls turned, we saw minor outflows on Friday, highlighting how sensitive Bitcoin is to the U.S. elections at present,” the report added. 

Republican ex-President Donald Trump is neck-and-neck with Democrat Kamala Harris in the race for the White House, national polls show. The former real estate mogul has explicitly said he’d help the digital asset industry, and now even has a decentralized finance (DeFi) project called World Liberty Financial.

Investors have swung from bullish to bearish whenever polls show that Trump may be falling behind Harris in the polls. Over the weekend, Trump’s odds on crypto prediction market platforms like Polymarket fell following a poll suggesting a potential surprise Trump loss ahead in Iowa—and the price of Bitcoin dipped alongside.

Bitcoin’s price now stands at $68,401, according to CoinGecko, a modest 1% rise over the past 24 hours. The digital coin last week was close to beating its $73,737 all-time high, coming just $175 away from the record price set back in March.

CoinShares added that Ethereum, the second biggest digital currency, received small inflows of $9.5 million last week.

Edited by Andrew Hayward