Morningstar, the US financial services firm, issued a report, which revealed that spot bitcoin ETFs of BlackRock and Fidelity were in the list of top ten ETFs in terms of net flows for January.
This feat is undoubtedly impressive when you consider the fact that neither of the two ETFs had been available to investors for the entire month of January.
The ETFs
Both the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) and the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) became available for trading on January 11th. This means that the two ETFs were available for trading for 14 days.
The net asset flows of the IBIT was around $2.7 billion and that of the FBTC stood at a total of $2.3 billion.
Net assets mean that both deposits and withdrawals in January were taken into consideration by Morningstar when doing the calculations.
It is important to note that the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, has a huge ETF business. Even if IBIT had not made it to the top ten list, it has five other funds competing.
These include the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF of the company, which took the top spot. These are considered signs that the ETFs of both Fidelity and BlackRock are doing well.
The performance
They are not only doing better than their competition in the crypto market, but others as well and this was apparent just a week after they became available for trading.
The performance of the ETFs is even more impressive given how quickly the hype associated with spot Bitcoin ETFs before their approval evaporated.
The day the spot Bitcoin ETFs were listed for trading, the price of Bitcoin had surged to $48,494.62, but after reaching their peak in less than two weeks, the price declined.
On January 23rd, the price of the leading crypto token in the market had fallen to $38,678.19. This was because a sell-off was triggered in the market.
The impact
The approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs also saw the conversion of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into an ETF, which meant that the previously locked-up shares could now be sold.
The selling pressure that emerged caused Bitcoin to lose all the gains it had recorded due to the hype associated with ETFs.
Grayscale also took a hit because its GBTC recorded the second-largest outflows of any ETF in the month.
The total value of shares that were sold after the conversion of GBTC into a spot Bitcoin ETF was $5.7 billion.
This outcome is considered a bittersweet one. Some analysts believe that Grayscale played a key role in the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs.
The company had filed a lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission over denying its application to convert its fund into an ETF.
The court had then ordered the securities regulator to reconsider and this eventually resulted in the approval.