KEY POINTS
- BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) swiftly accumulated over 11,000 BTC, valued at nearly $500 million, within 48 hours of its Nasdaq debut
- This acquisition by BlackRock equates to roughly 13 days' worth of Bitcoin production
- Bitcoin was trading down at $42,451.25 as of 2:55 p.m. ET on Sunday
iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), the spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) from world's largest asset manager BlackRock, has quickly amassed over 11,000 bitcoins (BTCs), currently valued at nearly $500 million, within just 48 hours of its debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
Blackrock's IBIT was one among the 11 spot bitcoin ETFs approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday.
Following its approval, IBIT made its trading debut on last Thursday and in just two days acquired a total of 11,439.2198 Bitcoin, valued at approximately $497,994,992.41 as of January 12 from the available supply.
Since only 900 BTC are issued daily, BlackRock's purchase represents approximately 13 days' worth of BTC production.
IBIT managed to get an average of 25% of the trading volume in two days and from the given data, around 46,000 BTC were absorbed by all spot Bitcoin ETFs in just a couple of days, including influences from other issuers like Grayscale.
An X account using the handle @invest_answers claiming to provide "analytics that defy the norm," noted that if this trend continues, the market could experience "an extreme supply crunch" in Bitcoin.
"Assuming 11,500 x 4 = 46,000 or 23,000 per day, that's 25.56 times the daily production consumed by US ETFs per day alone," the X account explained.
#Blackrock took 11,500 $BTC from Supply in 2 days
— InvestAnswers (@invest_answers) January 13, 2024
900 Bitcoin are issued daily, and you can see Blackrock's move into their cash supply from last night into Bitcoin, buying the dip. Now, they mostly hold Bitcoin.
The key point is 11,500 BTC were sucked from the system in 2 days… pic.twitter.com/GzoEk2uMSl
The first two trading days post SEC's spot Bitcoin ETF approval saw a significant inflow amounting to $1.4 billion, with a total net inflow across all BTC-related products amounting to $819 million, including the GBTC outflows.
BlackRock's IBIT led from the front, recording a total flow of $497.7 million with Fidelity's Advantage Bitcoin ETF at its tail with $422.3 million and Bitwise with $237.90 million inflows at the third post.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, in a recent interview, shared that spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds are just the first step in revolutionizing the financial world.
"ETFs are step one in the technological revolution in the financial markets. Step two is going to be the tokenization of every financial asset, the CEO of the asset management titan said.
While the spot BTC ETFs are enjoying massive trading volumes over the past two days of trading, Bitcoin, the world's oldest crypto asset was trading down at $42,451.25 as of 2:55 p.m. ET on Sunday with a 24-hour trading volume of $13,492,840,307.
Bitcoin's latest price action represents a 0.52% dip in its value in the past 24 hours and a 3.85% loss over the last seven days.
Data from CoinMarketCap shows that Bitcoin's current circulating supply stands at 19,598,718 BTC and its market cap is at $833,692,944,250.
