On Thursday, the U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs saw their net inflows slow to the lowest level so far this month as bitcoin swiftly retreated after reaching its latest all-time high.
Net inflows fell to $132.5 million yesterday, heavily impacted by $257.1 million in outflows from Grayscale’s converted GBTC fund, according to data from BitMEX Research. Total net inflows since spot bitcoin ETF trading began on Jan. 11 now stand at just under $12 billion — or over 211,000 BTC in bitcoin terms.
BlackRock’s IBIT ETF dominated Thursday’s inflows as usual, adding $345.4 million. VanEck’s HODL came second yesterday, registering $13.8 million worth of inflows as it continues to witness improved flows since temporarily reducing its fee to zero. Surprisingly, Fidelity’s FBTC spot bitcoin ETF, which regularly places second to IBIT, slumped to third for the day with $13.7 million in net inflows — its lowest daily figure since launch.
Interest in the spot bitcoin ETFs still appears to be growing, however, with financial advisory firm Cetera Financial Group approving the usage of BlackRock’s IBIT, Fidelity’s FBTC, Franklin Templeton’s EZBC and Invesco’s BTCO for its affiliated financial professionals’ clients on Thursday.
“As expected, we are prudently embracing bitcoin ETFs and we prioritized developing this important guidance to help our financial professionals implement these products in client portfolios,” Cetera Head of Investment Products and Partner Solutions Matt Fries said in a statement.
“Financial advisory firms are now issuing press releases regarding use of btc ETFs,” The ETF Store President Nate Geraci said. “In other words, attempting to use bitcoin ETFs as a point of differentiation/competitive advantage. Things are getting wild.”
Spot bitcoin ETFs witness third-biggest day for trading volume
Daily trading volume for the U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs combined hit the third-largest level of $7.98 billion on Thursday as bitcoin’s price hit fresh highs before dropping sharply. The record daily trading volume for the ETFs remains $9.9 billion, set on March 5 — when bitcoin first broke its prior cycle all-time high of $69,000.
BlackRock’s IBIT ETF again led yesterday, generating a trading volume of $3.92 billion — the fund’s second-biggest trading day so far. Grayscale’s GBTC and Fidelity’s FBTC generated $1.96 billion and $1.21 billion of trading volume, respectively, according to The Block’s Data Dashboard.
BlackRock’s IBIT is fast approaching 50% market share by trading volume, currently sitting at 49.1%. Meanwhile, Grayscale’s higher-fee GBTC fund has slumped from a 50.5% market share on Jan. 11 to 24.6% as of Thursday.
Trading volume for the spot bitcoin ETFs has increased significantly this month, surpassing January and February volumes after just two weeks. “Here’s the monthly volume for the ten bitcoin ETFs. March is only half over but has already smashed the numbers from February and January with $65 billion,” Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas posted on X.
Spot bitcoin ETF monthly volume. Image: Bloomberg.
Cumulative trading volume for all spot bitcoin ETFs now stands at $135.9 billion.
Bitcoin retreats from fresh all-time highs
The price of bitcoin reached a fresh all-time high of $73,836 on Thursday before a sharp sell-off saw the largest cryptocurrency by market cap fall 11% to a low of $65,566. Bitcoin has since recovered slightly, currently trading for $67,696, according to The Block’s price page.
BTC/USD price chart. Image: The Block/TradingView.
The correction led to substantial liquidation of long positions on centralized exchanges over the past 24 hours. This volatility resulted in the liquidation of more than $278 million in bitcoin positions, with the majority ($225 million) being longs, according to CoinGlass data.
The overall crypto market experienced over $667 million in liquidated long positions during the period, contributing to $809 million in total liquidations across various centralized exchanges.
This decline can be seen across the wider market, with the GM30 index — representing the top 30 cryptocurrencies by market cap — having fallen from 162 to 154, down 5%. Similar indices for Layer 1 and Layer 2 tokens have also seen a similar drawdown. That said, all three indices are still up considerably since late last year.
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