The iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) team revealed that the fund is 99% comprised of bitcoin, with a current total of 25,067 BTC under management.
“We are thrilled to achieve this milestone in IBIT’s first week. It validates the strong investor demand, and we believe this is just the beginning. We are committed to offering investors access to our high-quality ETFs in the long term,” said Robert Mitchnick, Head of Digital Assets at BlackRock.
On Wednesday, January 17, the IBIT fund closed ETF share trading at $24.41 per share, currently trading at a slight premium of 0.42%. The fund experienced an average daily trading volume of 14 million units.
A day prior, Brian Kelly, founder of investment company VKSM, stated on CNBC Crypto that Grayscale, BlackRock, and Fidelity had emerged as dominant players in the expanding Bitcoin ETF spot market, collectively controlling around 90% of the total trading volume.
“By the end of the trading session, Grayscale, BlackRock, and Fidelity demonstrated their absolute dominance, contributing more than $1.6 billion out of the total $1.8 billion trading volume. This competition between the giants could ignite innovation in the Bitcoin ETF market,” Brian Kelly remarked.
VKSM’s founder believes that such consolidation is both a blessing and a curse. While it establishes stability and legitimacy in the crypto space, concerns regarding collusion and lack of diversification for Bitcoin ETF investors arise.
Prior to this, Eric Balchunas, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, reported that the daily trading volumes of spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in the United States already surpass the daily turnover of the 500 largest ETFs launched last year for other assets.