Bitcoin Rises Again After The Decreased Sales Of GBTC

Bitcoin, the world's largest digital asset by market cap. (Photo; Doc. Pixabay)

JAKARTA - Bitcoin (BTC) again showed a positive trend after being corrected under USD 40,000 last week. Then, on Thursday January 25, 2024, the price of BTC managed to break the USD 41,000 level, up 3.5%. At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at USD 42 (IDR 668 million) according to Coinecko data.

This recovery is driven by various factors, one of which is the slowdown in the outflow of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), the world's largest crypto investment product. Additional information, GBTC is an investment fund that allows investors to gain exposure to BTC without having to buy and store it directly.

GBTC has assets under management (AUM) of 26.04 billion US dollars as of January 24, 2024. However, GBTC has experienced a decline in demand since the launch of the Exchange-Trad Funds (ETF) Bitcoin spot in the United States on January 11. Bitcoin spot ETF offers profits such as lower management costs, more accurate exchange rates, and easy transactions.

Currently, there are nine spot Bitcoin ETFs that have received approval from US regulators, namely:

According to data from BitMEX Research, GBTC experienced a decline in outflows, reaching US$394.1 million (Rp 6.2 trillion) on January 25, down from US$429.3 million (Rp 6.8 trillion) on Wednesday and US$515.3 million (Rp 8.1 trillion) on Tuesday. Even though the outflow remains high, this is the second lowest since the launch of the spot Bitcoin ETF.

Meanwhile, the spot's Bitcoin ETF managed to attract incoming funds from investors. IBIT recorded the largest inflow that day with 170.7 million US dollars (Rp 2.7 trillion), FBTC generated 101 million US dollars (Rp 1.6 trillion), and BITB was in third place with 20 million US dollars (Rp 316 billion). However, the total inflow from nine ETFs is not enough to cover the GBTC outflow, resulting in a net outflow of nearly 80 million US dollars (Rp 1.3 trillion).

Since its launch, the spot's Bitcoin ETF has attracted a net inflow of US$74.6 million (Rp 11.8 trillion), with nine new participants collecting capital injections of US$5.53 billion (Rp 87.5 trillion), while the GBTC recorded a total outflow of US$4.79 billion (Rp 75.7 trillion).