BlackRock investors are relentless.
Larry Fink’s firm led exchange-traded fund flows across every sector last week, topping the list with $3.5 billion in flows into its Bitcoin ETF, IBIT.
That’s 10% of all net inflows into ETFs.
In second and third place came Vanguard and State Street. Their flagship S&P 500 trackers, SPLG and VOO, hauled in $2.4 billion and $2.3 billion, respectively.
What’s impressive, however, is that both are getting lapped by a two-year-old. BlackRock’s IBIT has been around since January 2024, while Vanguard’s SPLG is 20 years old, and State Street’s VOO has been around for 15 years.
Still, BlackRock wasn’t alone in its feeding frenzy.
Every single Bitcoin ETF took in cash last week, with a total of 43,100 Bitcoin worth about $4.8 billion, according to Coinglass.
“That’s how hungry the fish are,” said Eric Balchunas, a Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst. “Two steps forward mode. Enjoy while it lasts.”
Moreover, flows into Bitcoin ETFs are nearly on par with 2024, with just under three months still to go. Year-to-date, inflows are now at $48.3 billion versus last year’s $48.5 billion, according to James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares.
Since its inception, BlackRock Bitcoin investors have been insatiable.
The fund is now nearing $100 billion in assets under management, making it the most profitable of all BlackRock ETFs.
Loads of that capital comes from investors who had to wait a decade before the SEC greenlit a Bitcoin-linked exchange-traded product. Now that it’s here, almost two years in, investors can’t get enough of it.
And lately, conditions have been favouring even more exposure to crypto’s top asset.
The “sustained high appetite” is driven by several factors, Butterfill told DL News.
For one, the Fed is starting to cut interest rates — which tends to favour risky assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum — while the US government shutdown is forcing investors to find protection.
“The ongoing U.S. government shutdown impasse shows no clear path to resolution,” said Butterfill. “This increasingly projects an image of ineffectiveness and raises questions about US creditworthiness.”
Off the back of BlackRock’s voracious appetite and the confluence of macro factors came a new all-time high for Bitcoin.
The crypto topped $126,000 on Monday for the first time.
BlackRock’s $3.5 billion intake is nothing short of impressive.
Notably, that figure represents more capital than the entire crypto venture capital funding for the first quarter of 2024 by a wide margin.