Inflows into U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have turned negative for the first time since they began trading on Jan. 11 of this year.
The reversal comes as money moving into ETFs such as BlackRock's IBIT and Fidelity's FBTC fails to keep pace with capital that is flowing out of Grayscale’s GBTC Bitcoin Trust fund.
According to data from Bloomberg Intelligence, the spot Bitcoin ETFs that are trading on U.S. exchanges saw a net outflow of $158 million U.S. on Jan. 24, the first such outflow recorded.
At the same time, CoinDesk reports that the total amount of Bitcoin held by the spot ETFs in the U.S. has declined by 11,000 tokens in recent days.
Money continues to flow out of the Grayscale fund due to the bankruptcy trustees of former crypto exchange FTX who are selling the Bitcoin held in the GBTC fund to raise cash and repay former FTX clients.
The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust preceded the new spot Bitcoin ETFs and was used as a custodian service by FTX, which filed for bankruptcy in November 2022.
Among the new crop of spot Bitcoin ETFs, BlackRock’s IBIT and Fidelity’s FBTC are leading the pack, each holding more than 40,000 Bitcoin as of Jan. 24.
Both the BlackRock and Fidelity funds are close to $2 billion U.S. in assets under management (AUMs).
That said, inflows at both funds have slowed over the last week. BlackRock added 1,663 Bitcoin tokens on Jan. 24, down from 8,705 on Jan. 17.
