ProShares’ Bitcoin Strategy (BITO) exchange traded fund posted the highest first day ‘natural’ volume for an ETF, reaching just over $ 1 billion at the end of the opening day.
It is second in the overall ranking, just behind the Blackrock US Carbon Transition Readiness ETF, which posted a volume of $ 1.16 billion on its debut in April.
ProShare’s Bitcoin futures-based ETF launched on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on October 19 with an opening price of $ 40.88.. According to data from TradingView, BITO closed the day at USD 41.94 with a total of 24,313 million shares that changed hands, which is equivalent to a volume on the first day of just over $ 1 billion.
In comments on BITO’s opening day performance, Bloomberg’s senior ETF analyst, Eric Balchunas, tweeted that the ProShares ETF was possibly the largest in terms of “popular interest” and “organic”.
If we don’t exclude ETFs where their Day One volume was literally one pre-planned giant investor or BYOA (not natural), it still ranks # 2 overall. Here’s that list. The reason some of these shouldn’t be included IMO is they don’t really represent grassroots interest. pic.twitter.com/wmZiHnpFrS
– Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) October 19, 2021
If we don’t exclude ETFs where their first day volume was literally a pre-planned giant investor or BYOA (not natural), they still rank second overall. Here is the list. I think that the reason some of these should not be included is that they do not really represent the popular interest.
Balchunas said that the April launch volume of the Blackrock Carbon Transition ETF (LCTU) was “unnatural” as it was driven by “a pre-planned giant investor”. LCTU daily volume also plummeted to between $ 2 million and $ 6 million in the days after launch.
Reportedly, there were $ 570 million inflows for BITO on day one, suggesting that the ProShares ETF could position itself as an industry heavyweight in terms of net flows in the first year for a commodity ETF that goes on the market for the first time in 12 months.
According to the FactSet data, the top two commodity ETFs leading the group are gold and silver, with first-year cash flows of $ 3 billion and $ 1.7 billion, respectively. Outside of commodities, the largest flow in a year for an ETP, of $ 5.351 million, was to the Invesco QQQ Trust.
Wondering how big the new bitcoin futures ETFs might get?
The white papers we submitted to the SEC last week have some context. For instance, here’s a table of the first year net flows into every first-to-market single commodity ETF (FactSet data). Https://t.co/3UnIel6sfX pic.twitter.com/h5Jg6RdgWd
– Matt Hougan (@Matt_Hougan) October 18, 2021
Wondering what the size of the new bitcoin futures ETFs will be?
The white papers we submitted to the SEC last week have some context. For example, here is a table of the first year net flows on each commodity ETF that goes to market for the first time (FactSet data)
While the bullish performance marks an important milestone for ProShares and the cryptocurrency sector, Balchunas warned that it could have consequences for the firm’s following in launching their own Bitcoin (BTC) futures ETFs.:
“The other result of today is that it makes life much more difficult for the next online ETFs to be successful. Time is of the essence. Every day counts, because once an ETF becomes known as ‘the only one’ and has tons of liquidity, it is virtually impossible to steal. ”
Following the launch of the ProShares ETF on Tuesday, the president of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler, outlined in an interview why he, and the SEC, are in favor of ETFs backed by Bitcoin futures as opposed to the spot price of BTC.
“BTC futures have been monitored by the SEC’s sister agency, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, for the past four years.. This is something that has been overseen for the past four years by a federal regulator and, furthermore, has been wrapped up in the SEC’s jurisdiction through the Investment Company Act of 1940, “he said.
The Valkyrie ETF based on Bitcoin futures will be the second product to join BITO on the New York Stock Exchange this week. The ETF has changed its name to BTFD, which stands for “Buy The F – ing Dip”.
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