The firm’s long standing gold ETF, the iShares Gold Trust (IAU), has been surpassed in assets by its Bitcoin ETF (IBIT); IBIT now holds more than $33 billion, compared to slightly lower total for IAU. IBIT, which launched in January, and IAU (which has been around since 2005) achieved this notable milestone just ten months after its launch.
It’s ‘absolutely wild’ the growth of the rapid is just rapid,’ President of The ETF Store Nate Geraci wrote in a post around Nov. 8 on the X platform. Post Trump’s victory in the United States’ presidential election, the crypto market started to gain optimism and investors started pouring in Bitcoin ETF investment to hedge against volatility.
Bitcoin ETFs Break Records
Research, this uptick is attributable to investors placing a bet on a more accommodating regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies under a Trump administration. On Nov. 6, Nov. 7, and since then, IBIT has experienced its highest trading volume ever, according to Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, and drew a $1.1 billion net inflow on Nov. 7 after net outflows totaling $113.3 million over two days, Farside data shows.
Bitcoin meanwhile reached new daily all time highs, trading above $76,800.This year, Bitcoin ETFs have been a major player in the ETF world, with IBIT ranking alongside other six Bitcoin ETFs in the top 10 of the most successful launches in 2024. While the top four for inflows of the roughly 400 new ETFs in 2022 are all spot bitcoin ETFs, that speaks to the demand for crypto based investment vehicles, Geraci said.
A number of pending crypto ETF proposals currently waiting in U.S. regulatory approval are being viewed as being lit green lights for Trump’s win. In addition to proposing crypto index funds that would hold diversified token baskets, including Solana, XRP and Litecoin, asset managers have also filed to list ETFs based on trading other cryptocurrencies.
Things couldn’t have played out better for these filings, says Balchunas, who commented Oct. 25: “These effectively functioned as call options on a Trump victory because there is far more symmetry to a crypto agenda under Trump versus Clinton.”If regulatory approvals continue to advance in the coming months, BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF milestone serves as a broader move by the investment space toward cryptocurrency.
