U.S. spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs have attracted roughly $2.8 billion in net inflows over the past five trading sessions, helping to push Bitcoin’s price from around $85,000 to $94,000. Notably, the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) accounted for $1.3 billion of that total.
Michael Saylor, Chairman of MicroStrategy (MSTR) — the largest publicly listed holder of Bitcoin — commented at Bitcoin Standard Corporation’s Investor Day that “IBIT will be the biggest ETF in the world in ten years.”
Currently, IBIT holds a market capitalization of $54 billion and saw more than $1.5 billion in trading volume on Thursday alone. For comparison, the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO), the world’s largest ETF by market cap, sits at $593.5 billion — over ten times the size of IBIT.
Eric Balchunas, Senior ETF Analyst at Bloomberg, acknowledged the possibility of IBIT eventually overtaking VOO but stressed it would require remarkable circumstances.
“It’s possible, especially if IBIT starts pulling in more cash than VOO, but that would demand daily inflows north of $1 billion — ideally between $3 to $4 billion — to catch up. Extraordinary things would have to happen, but it’s possible,” Balchunas said.
Meanwhile, the annualized basis trade for Bitcoin ETFs — where investors go long the ETF and short CME Bitcoin futures — has jumped to nearly 10%, up from 5% earlier this month. Combined with a 2,000 BTC increase in futures open interest over the past week, this suggests that some of the ETF inflows could be tied to basis trades rather than purely directional bets.
