Grayscale’s GBTC stops bleeding: First inflow since launch
Grayscale Investments has achieve its first day of net positive inflows for the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). This comes after nearly four months of continuous outflows since its conversion to a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in January.
On May 3, Grayscale’s GBTC recorded $63 million in inflows after recording approximately $17.5 billion of outflows since the 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs launched on Jan. 11, according to Farside preliminary data.
Among the other funds reported so far, Franklin Templeton's Bitcoin ETF (EZBC) saw its highest ever inflow with $60.9 million.
Meanwhile, Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) led the day's inflows with $102.6 million, followed by Bitwise Bitcoin Fund (BITB) with $33.5 million and Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF (BTCO) with $33.2 million.
The crypto community has been speculating how the turn in events might impact Bitcoin’s (BTC) price.
Pseudonymous crypto investor DivXman told his followers that the GBTC was the “primary source” of sell pressure across all spot Bitcoin ETFs, but “the tides” could be turning.
“That effectively means a significant decrease in sell pressure and additional increase in demand while ETFs collectively are buying more BTC than miners can create,” he explained to his 20,800 X followers in a May 3 post.
Crypto trader Jelle predicted to his 80,300 X followers on the same day that Bitcoin's new all-time high is on the horizon.
“60 million dollars worth of inflows for Grayscale's ETF. The halving chop will come to an end, and 6-figure Bitcoin will follow shortly after.”
Related: Grayscale spot Bitcoin ETF ‘halves’ before BTC halving
Meanwhile, crypto trader Jordan Lindsey responded to the news by pointing to Bitcoin’s price saying it is “obviously responding both to outflows and inflows.”
Bitcoin’s price has increased 4.91% over the past 24 hours to $62,840 at the time of publication, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Several factors contributed to Grayscale’s ongoing outflows since the launch of the 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs. One reason is GBTC's high fees compared to other available ETFs. GBTC's fee is set at 1.5%, whereas the fees for other ETFs are all below 1%.
The cheapest is currently Franklin Templeton with a 0.19% fee. Another main driver is bankrupt crypto firms FTX and Genesis selling off large amounts of GBTC shares in an effort to repay creditors.
On April 6, Cointelegraph reported that Genesis liquidated approximately 36 million GBTC shares for the amount of $2.1 billion to purchase 32,041 Bitcoin.
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