Of their very first yr of buying and selling, spot bitcoin (BTCUSD) exchange-traded funds have seen billions of greenback movement into them and have made it easier for investors to spend money on the cryptocurrency. Nevertheless, not all bitcoin ETFs are made the identical and this previous yr has proven us that there was a transparent winner.

Since they started buying and selling on Jan. 11, 2024, spot bitcoin ETFs have seen web inflows of roughly $36.2 billion, in accordance with knowledge from Farside Buyers. Whereas the iShares Bitcoin Belief (IBIT) noticed web inflows price practically $38 billion throughout the interval, outflows totaling greater than $21 billion from Grayscales Bitcoin Belief (GBTC) dragged combination inflows down.

The market additionally noticed heavy buying and selling quantity of greater than $5 billion in a single day on a number of events, in accordance with The Block.

iShares Bitcoin ETF Is a Document-Breaking Winner

The huge inflows into IBIT had been practically 3 times better than these into its closest competitor.

The Constancy Sensible Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) was the one different spot bitcoin ETF with greater than $10 billion in inflows. In truth, the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB) and ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) had been the one different funds with inflows within the billions.

By way of present measurement, IBIT’s AUM sits at $52.9 billion as of Jan. 19, 2025, considerably larger than different comparable merchandise.

And never solely did the ETF go away its opponents within the mud, it broke all types of information whereas doing so.

For instance, IBIT reached the $50 billion of property underneath administration milestone in simply 227 buying and selling days, breaking the earlier report of 1,323 days set by iShares Core MSCI Rising Markets ETF (IEMG), in accordance with Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas.

Bitcoin is usually known as digital gold, however IBIT not only surpassed iShares’ personal gold ETF (IAU) in property however is shortly gaining on the $75 billion in property held by the world’s largest gold ETF—the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD).

GBTC’s Large Outflows and ETFs That Did Little

Determining the most important losers within the first yr of spot bitcoin ETF buying and selling is a little more troublesome, as there are arguments for and towards GBTC.

On the one hand, the ETF skilled huge outflows of $1.6 billion in its first yr of buying and selling. However, it’s nonetheless the second or third-largest spot bitcoin ETF available on the market, relying on the day. In fact, it needs to be famous that a few of GBTC’s property had been additionally spun off into the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Belief ETF (BTC).

This mismatch between GBTC’s inflows and AUM is brought on by the truth that the fund existed previous to the accepted itemizing of those monetary merchandise as ETFs.

Then there are these ETFs that hardly moved the needle. Funds promoted by Franklin (EZBC), Invesco (BTCO), Valkyrie (BRRR), VanEck (HODL) and WisdomTree (BTCW) all skilled lower than $1 billion of inflows throughout their first buying and selling yr.