Fidelity Plugs The GBTC Bleed: Spot Bitcoin ETFs Begin Healing With Inflows Ramping Up


Fidelity’s Spot Bitcoin ETF, FBTC, recorded an impressive amount of inflows on January 29 (Day 12 of trading). Notably, the figure alone was enough to overshadow the outflows recorded by Grayscale’s GBTC. This suggests that things are beginning to stabilize for the Bitcoin ETF market as net inflows overwhelm the outflows. 

Fidelity Records $208 Million Of Inflows

BitMEX Research revealed in an X (formerly Twitter) post that Fidelity’s FBTC saw an inflow of $208 million on January 29. This figure more than offsets the $192 million in outflows recorded by Grayscale’s GBTC. Before now, GBTC’s outflows had been the major talking point and how they were negatively impacting BTC’s price.

However, that looks to be changing, seeing as how only FBTC’s inflow has been able to overshadow GBTC’s outflow. Interestingly, the cumulative inflows recorded by the other nine Spot Bitcoin ETF issuers have always offset GBTC’s outflows. 

Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart highlighted how the “newborn 9” had a gross flow of $5.8 billion after Day 11 of trading in comparison to GTBC’s total outflow of $5 billion since its Spot Bitcoin ETF conversion. Meanwhile, these newborn 9 are said to have bought 140,000 BTC since they launched while Grayscale has sold about 120,000 BTC in that same period. 

This is why BitMEX’s co-founder Arthur Hayes was quick to dismiss the argument that Grayscale’s BTC sales were the major reason for Bitcoin’s recent decline. Whatever the case might be, GBTC’s outflows slowing down is good news for the market since the selling pressure from Grayscale is bound to reduce. 

BTC price chart from Tradingview.com (Bitcoin Spot ETF)

Fight For Spot Bitcoin ETF Dominance Is Still On

Spot Bitcoin ETF issuers are not relenting in their fight for a huge chunk of the Bitcoin ETF market. Seyffart revealed that Invesco and Galaxy Digital had slashed the long-term fee on their Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF from 0.39% to 0.25%. It is worth mentioning that they had already waived fees for the first six months or the first $5 billion in assets. 

Following this development, Grayscale is now the only issuer with a fund fee above 0.30%. GBTC’s management fee currently stands at 1.5%. However, analysts like Samson Mow predict that Grayscale will cut this fee soon enough. 

Meanwhile, Google began allowing these issuers to roll out advertisements for their respective funds on January 29, and asset managers like BlackRock and VanEck didn’t waste time in leveraging these Google Ads to market their Spot Bitcoin ETF. This marketing war is expected to remain a constant as Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas once mentioned that these asset managers will look to always outdo themselves.