BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF records new high in daily volume

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The SEC approved spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US in January 2024, and since then these instruments have been setting records after records. BlackRock’s IBIT (iShares Bitcoin Trust) has led the pack for some time now; recently on March 14, about 100 million shares of IBIT were traded, making for a new daily volume record.

These spot ETFs have been largely responsible for Bitcoin’s newest all-time high at around $73,000 in the recent past. Now, Bitcoin trades around $68,500 on March 15, down by a little over 6 percent in the past 24 hours.

On March 14, IBIT traded about 99.3 million shares as per Barchart data. This translate into a trading volume of about $3.9 billion. Notably, the last highest daily volume was recorded for IBIT just over a week ago on March 5, at $3.7 billion.

While BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF runs ahead of its contemporaries, the GBTC or the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust continues to lead all ten spot BTC ETFs in the US in terms of total assets. Notably, on March 14, its daily trading volume recorded was second only to IBIT- at $1.96 billion.

All ten of the instruments have now completed two months of being tradable to the public. The high recorded in them has coincided with gold facing some downward sentiments, leading to Senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas at Bloomberg labeling gold’s ‘pain’ a ‘gain’ for Bitcoin.

He further commented that despite March being only halfway over, the ten US-based Bitcoin ETFs have ‘already smashed the numbers from Feb and Jan.’ with $65 billion in volume so far.

The success of Bitcoin ETFs leads most in the world of crypto now look forward to a similar round of approvals on Ethereum ETF applications the SEC has received. In the mean time, Bitcoin’s rally has been grabbing attention of both retail and institutional investors. The positivity in the market recently got a boost from the seasoned Bitcoin investor MicroStrategy, who have purchased another 12,000 bitcoins, bringing the institution’s overall BTC holdings up to around 205,000 units.

Bitcoin halving is the next big event lined up for April 2024, making the coming days quite intriguing ones to crypto proponents.

Shashank is the founder of yMedia. He ventured into crypto in 2013 and is an ETH maximalist.
Twitter: @bhardwajshash