BlackRock’s IBIT hits $40B net inflows

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BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) had more than $60 billion in assets under management on Thursday.

The trust eclipsed $40 billion in net inflows that day — after less than 13 months on the market.

Source: Farside Investors

You may recall the product’s 71-day net inflow streak out of the gate. And that IBIT attracted 21% of BlackRock’s Q1 2024 flows. The ETF’s ~$34 billion of positive net flows in 2024 made up about 5% of BlackRock’s $641 billion total over that span.

The $60 billion AUM figure puts IBIT at No. 31 on VettaFi’s list of the largest ETFs (albeit with a slightly different total).

The five ETFs just ahead of it (Nos. 26-30) have been on the market for an average of ~19 years — putting in perspective how fast this product is climbing the charts.

Another stat: IBIT is the 11th-largest iShares ETF out of more than 400. The biggest is the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV), with roughly $600 billion AUM. That’s good for third on VettaFi’s list — behind only SPY and VOO, which also offer S&P 500 exposure.

So IBIT remains about 10 times smaller than the world’s three largest ETFs. How high on the list could it get? And in what time frame?

Bitwise research head Ryan Rasmussen wanted to avoid naming specific bitcoin ETFs. But he told me he wouldn’t be surprised to see one such product surpass the largest gold ETF — State Street’s SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), with ~$76 billion AUM — within the next year or two.

IBIT eclipsing GLD would likely put it in the top 20.

But a bitcoin ETF climbing above the biggest broad-based equities ETFs is a much taller task. Those are “a staple” in a majority of portfolios (often commanding an allocation of 20-50%), Rasmussen noted. If included, a bitcoin ETF allocation is typically 1-5%.

“It would take a significant increase in bitcoin’s price, increased investor adoption, and upsizing typical bitcoin allocations for a single bitcoin ETF to penetrate the top five or 10 ETFs by AUM,” he said. “All three of those things are possible, but that would be many years down the road.”

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