Crypto
A Bitcoin ATM in Hong Kong...
A bitcoin ATM in Hong Kong (S3studio/Getty Images)
Uptober

Bitcoin and its spot ETFs continue to hit new records

On Monday, bitcoin crossed $126,000 for the first time while bitcoin ETFs saw $1.2 billion in inflows.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

Bitcoin just keeps notching all-time highs. Just two days following its previous all-time high, the asset passed $126,000 for the first time on Monday, a more than 100% jump from where it stood a year ago at $62,800.

JPMorgan analysts wrote that increased institutional interest combined with the “debasement trade,” including macro uncertainty, “waning confidence in fiat currencies in certain emerging markets,” and “persistently high government deficits across major economies,” are continuing to fuel the rally, though bitcoin has sold off on Tuesday morning and is hovering around $123,000.

Sam Callahan, director of bitcoin strategy and research at newly listed OranjeBTC, told Sherwood News that investors are increasingly gravitating to hard money as perceived risks around fiscal sustainability and currency debasement rise.

“Bitcoin at record highs is consistent with a world where global debt is sitting around $340 trillion and major governments continue to run multitrillion-dollar deficits,” he said.

Bitcoin ETFs also saw record inflows on Monday, amassing over $1.2 billion, the largest amount since their inception in January 2024. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust took in the bulk of yesterday’s inflows, racking up $969.95 million, SoSoValue data shows.

BlackRock’s fund is nearing $100 billion in assets under management, and is also BlackRock’s most profitable ETF, according to Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas, who noted in a post on X that the rest of the firm’s top 10 ETFs are decades old, while IBIT is not even 2.

David Siemer, CEO and cofounder of Wave Digital Assets, said that ETF inflows continue to be a massive catalyst, pulling in fresh institutional capital at an unprecedented pace.

“At the same time, the Fed’s pivot toward rate cuts has weakened the dollar and boosted risk appetite across the board, with crypto benefiting disproportionately. Add to macro uncertainty surrounding the US government shutdown, and you’ve got an environment where even modest demand creates outsized moves,” Siemer said.

VanEck’s head of digital assets research, Matthew Sigel, predicted in a post on X that bitcoin “should reach half of gold’s market cap after the next halving... At today’s record gold price, that implies an equivalent value of $644,000 per BTC.” That said, the next halving will likely happen in 2028, so time will tell.

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Solana ETFs listings delayed as JPMorgan predicts the funds to net $1.5 billion in first year

JPMorgan analysts noted that “solana is not perceived by investors the same way as ethereum as the main DeFi/smart contract cryptocurrency.”

crypto

BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF is on the cusp of $100 billion in assets, a milestone it will have achieved in less than two years

While VOO might be the largest ETF in the world, IBIT — BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF — is the fastest-growing. And the bitcoin-centered product is on the cusp of a major milestone, reporting that it now holds 802,257 BTC, putting it within a whisker of hitting $100 billion in assets (worth roughly $99 billion in good old-fashioned USD at the time of writing).

Considering that BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust launched only 636 days ago, that’s a remarkable speedrun, as individual and institutional investors have embraced cryptocurrency via the exchange-traded fund. For context, VOO took over 2,900 days to hit the same milestone (about eight years).

VOO vs. IBIT spead to $100 billion assets under management
Sherwood News

As noted in a great piece by Robin Wigglesworth in the Financial Times, IBIT is now a major money-spinner for one of the biggest stalwarts of TradFi. As the largest exchange-traded product in the crypto space, and with a not insignificant expense ratio of 0.25%, the ETF is pulling in somewhere in the region of $250 million of revenue for its asset manager parent company. As Wigglesworth puts it:

“Anyway, it’s heartwarming to see that one of the companies profiting the most from an anarchical, decentralised invention supposedly designed to reorder the global financial system is... BlackRock.”

crypto

Bitcoin ETFs take in more than $2 billion in two days

Bitcoin is down 2.7% from its recent record which saw it passing $126,000, but bitcoin ETFs are still hot.

The ETFs have already amassed more than $2 billion this week, on track to surpass last week’s $3.2 billion in inflows. In total, bitcoin ETFs have just under $165 billion in assets under management, representing 6.78% of the total market cap, SoSoValue data shows.

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust by far took the lion’s share, with $1.8 billion of inflows. The fund is also close to $100 billion in assets, despite not even being 2 years old.

Bitwise CEO Matt Hougan said in a note, “The stars are aligned for a very strong Q4 for flows — more than enough to push us to a new record,” in part thanks to the “debasement trade.” 

10%

Ethereum treasury companies and ETFs hold more than 10% of the cryptocurrency’s total supply of 120.7 million tokens.

Corporate firms own roughly 5.7 million, while ethereum reserves for ETFs stand at 6.8 million tokens, worth more than $59 billion, per data from analytics platform StrategicETHReserve.xyz.

BitMine Immersion Technologies and SharpLink Gaming have taken the top spots among treasury entities, amassing about 3.7 million ethereum tokens worth roughly $17.4 billion. SharpLink Gaming recently announced that its unrealized profits have reached $900 million since the rollout of its ethereum treasury strategy in June. 

Meanwhile, BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust ETF has secured the lead among spot ethereum ETFs with $18.6 billion in net assets. So far in October, $803.1 million of inflows have collectively entered the investment vehicles. 

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Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, or Robinhood Money, LLC.