Close to 640,000 Bitcoins Held by US Bitcoin ETFs Now

Crypto trader and analyst Ali Martinez, known on the X/Twitter social media platform as @ali_charts, has published a screenshot with data provided by on-chain analytics aggregator Crypto Quant to show how the Bitcoin sums acquired by Bitcoin ETF issuers have accumulated by now.

The overall amount has closely approached the $30 billion level worth of Bitcoin.

Billions of Bitcoin bought by ETF makers

According to Crypto Quant, as of Jan. 19, spot Bitcoin ETF issuers are holding more than 638,000 BTC. This is the equivalent of approximately $27 billion in fiat.

The largest amount of Bitcoin, almost all of it, actually, according to this table, is held by Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) – 566,973 BTC. It is followed by BlackRock and its iShares spot ETF traded under the IBIT ticker as it holds 28,662 BTC.

#Bitcoin ETFs in the US now hold over 638,900 $BTC, worth around $27 billion! Probably nothing... 👀 pic.twitter.com/IQbM2DT4FJ— Ali (@ali_charts) January 22, 2024

The trading volume of GBTC is also far greater than that of IBIT and than the volumes of all the other spot Bitcoin ETFs measured by volume of shares traded – 35,575,141 for Grayscale versus 18,256,798 for IBIT.

Grayscale CEO predicts crash for majority of BTC ETFs

Last week, while talking to CNBC at the annual World Economic Forum event in Davos, the chief executive of Grayscale, Michael Sonnenshein, stated that he does not believe that all 11 spot-based Bitcoin ETFs are going to survive the market race in the long term.

The competition will be severe, Sonnenshein reckons, therefore, the majority of the Bitcoin ETFs are likely to be pushed out of the market, he expects. Aside from sharing this, the CEO also elaborated on the high management fees for its Bitcoin ETF. It is the highest among all the 11 hedge funds and amounts to 1.5%, while BlackRock, Ark Invest, Fidelity and the others are trying to keep their fees below the 0.5% level, at least at the start.

Sonnenshein explained such high fees, saying that the company has been running this business for a staggering 10 years, and that is a good track record, unlike the other companies that have just started offering Bitcoin services to their customers. This track record of Grayscale proves the company’s long term commitment, Sonnenshein believes.