Samara Cohen, chief investment officer of ETF and index investments at Blackrock, center, rings the opening bell as bitcoin spot ETFs are launched on the Nasdaq Exchange in New York City on Jan. 11, 2024.
Stephanie Keith | Getty Images
Bitcoin exchange-traded funds saw big swings on their first day of trading on Thursday, mirroring a volatile day for crypto prices more broadly.
During midday trading, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) was up 1.3%, while the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) fell more than 4% after initially rising. Both funds saw millions of shares of trading volume within the first 10 minutes of the trading session.
Those two are among the first of as many as 11 funds that are expected to trade on Thursday.
Bitcoin ETFs on Thursday
The Grayscale fund is the biggest of the group, as it was converted from an over-the-counter trust that already had more than $28 billion in assets. The Hashdex fund is a strategy change from an existing bitcoin futures ETF, and SEC filings indicated that the change had not yet taken effect as of Thursday morning.
The moves for the funds came as bitcoin saw volatile trading. The digital currency briefly hit the $49,000 mark Thursday morning before falling back below $47,000, for a gain of less than 1%, according to Coin Metrics. Bitcoin trades around the clock, so the first-day moves for the funds could be affected by the exact timing of their launch.
ETFs are an investment vehicle where investors buy shares that represent a claim on the fund’s underlying assets. Some of the most popular ETFs are equity index funds, though other funds in the category track bonds, derivatives products and commodities such as gold.
Financial advisors and institutional investors often use ETFs because of their liquidity and tax advantages compared to mutual funds. Asset managers are betting that bitcoin ETFs will bring new investors to crypto.
“This is actually what ETFs were made for — to take difficult, complex things and make it simple and compliant to trade. This will mainstream the asset class,” WisdomTree CEO Jonathan Steinberg said on CNBC’s “Money Movers.”
“This will allow a less technology-sophisticated investor to buy bitcoin in a way that they are very comfortable with,” Steinberg added.
Investors and financial advisors will be watching closely to see not only how the bitcoin ETFs perform, but also how well they track the price of bitcoin. Wide gaps between the price of a fund and the price of the underlying bitcoin that lasts for multiple days could be a sign of thin trading or structural issues with an ETF and scare off potential buyers, even if the fund is temporarily outperforming spot bitcoin.
Trading volume will also be a key metric for investors, as funds with more trading are seen as more efficient.
The success of the funds could also be affected by different price points. Several fund issuers cut their proposed fees just below launch, and many are offering temporary waivers that cut their management fee to 0% in the short run.
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