- BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF is fast approaching $20 billion in assets, making it among the top 3% ETFs in the world.
- Institutional investment has been fueling BTC prices ahead of the upcoming halving as the digital asset eyes gold’s market cap.
BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF, using market ticker IBIT, has at the beginning of the week clocked $18.96 billion in assets. As the Bitcoin ETF emerges as one of the top 3% ETFs and challenges traditional ETFs, it is clear it is the best-performing asset in history. When a gold ETF was launched, it took nearly 10 years to reach over $10 billion. For Bitcoin, this has taken under 3 months. Notably, Bitcoin has already surpassed all silver ETFs with gold now in sight.
Bitcoin has long been compared to gold, but Bitcoin continues to demonstrate its superiority over the metal. Not only is Bitcoin capped at 21 million, unlike gold whose deposits remain unknown, Bitcoin is portable, an easy means of payment it has also been the best-performing asset in the last decade, by far outperforming gold. With ETFs, Bitcoin is once again coming out on top of gold.
$IBIT is nearing $20b in assets, curr 88th spot among all ETFs, which puts it in Top 3%. It just passed a bunch of veterans incl $EEM, $EWJ, $SMH and $TIP pic.twitter.com/IgmuHpFlKb
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) April 8, 2024
With BlackRock’s IBIT assets under management totaling $18.96 billion, it is ranked 88th overall. For BlackRock, the Bitcoin ETF is the 31 largest BlackRock fund (out of 1,095 funds). Since the launch of a Bitcoin ETF, its performance is correlated with the BTC price. Since the turn of the year, BTC has delivered around 140% in returns.
At the time of writing, BTC is trading at $70,669 after a 2.2% drop in the last 24 hours. After a 7.5% surge in the last 7 days, bulls are keen to defend the $70,000 support to maintain the bullish momentum.
One of the most bullish events in Bitcoin’s history is fast approaching with the BTC halving less than two weeks away. Historically, this event has ushered in a new all-time high. Former White House communications director has recently opined about the expected price movement. Anthony Scaramucci pointed out that BTC is a cyclical product that typically moves 4x within 18 months of the halving. Based on this trend, Scaramucci expects Bitcoin to reach $170,000 after the halving as CNF highlighted.
In the long term, the expert foresees the digital asset reaching over $400,000 which would see its market cap match gold.
Some in the community have been drawing parallels from Bitcoin Cash (BCH), a 2017 fork of Bitcoin. The altcoin celebrated its successful halving at the start of the month. In the last 7 days, BCH has delivered over 15% in gains with experts foreseeing even higher gains ahead.
However, while BCH might lay out the path, it is important to note that BTC is far more popular and dominant. While BCH is ranked 14th with a market cap of $13.2 billion, BTC is first with a market cap of over $1.3 trillion. Additionally, BTC has a market dominance of 49.9% with second place ETH only garnering 15.7%.
