VanEck Bitcoin Trust’s volume Tuesday was about 14.5 times its daily average, while WisdomTree Bitcoin Fund’s volume was more than 10 times its daily average.
The increase in trading volume experienced by the two ETFs came from thousands of individual trades, according to Bloomberg Intelligence’s Eric Balchunas.
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Posted February 20, 2024 at 4:35 pm EST.
Two spot bitcoin ETFs, the VanEck Bitcoin Trust (HODL) and WisdomTree Bitcoin Fund (BTCW), have seen huge upticks in trading volume, data from the Bloomberg Terminal cited by ETF analyst Eric Balchunas shows.
On Tuesday, HODL’s daily trading volume exceeded $258 million, which is more than 14.5 times its daily trading volume average of nearly $17.78 million. HODL’s significant deviation from its norm is not from “one big investor (which would make sense) but rather 32,000 individual trades,” wrote Bloomberg Intelligence’s Balchunas on X.
“I’ve never seen a grassroots trading explosion come out of nowhere like this,” Balchunas added.
Five days ago, VanEck filed a notice to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) indicating that it would lower the fee for its spot BTC ETF by five basis points from 0.25% to 0.20%, effective Feb. 21.
Read More: How ETF Inflows Could Shape Bitcoin’s Price Trajectory
Similarly, BTCW surpassed $154 million in trading volume, a roughly 982% jump from its average daily trading volume of $14.23 million. The number of individual trades of BTCW stands at 23,000, a substantial jump from a “mere 221 trades on Friday,” Balchunas said.
The surge in trading volume for VanEck and WisdomTree’s spot BTC ETFs comes as the price of the largest cryptocurrency by market cap has increased 13% to $52,070 since the SEC approved multiple spot BTC ETFs on Jan. 10.
While some on social media speculated that VanEck and WisdomTree’s increased trading volume stems from people selling BTC, Balchunas wrote on X that the argument doesn’t make sense because, “the volume is double the [assets under management], there weren’t that many existing investors to even sell and we’ve never seen 100% outflow of AUM [especially] for new ETFs w new investors.”
Read More: 5 Ways That Spot Bitcoin ETFs Have Smashed All Expectations
The VanEck Bitcoin Trust is the seventh-largest of the 10 spot bitcoin ETFs and holds 3,677 bitcoins, worth about $191.5 million, while WisdomTree is the smallest of the 10 ETFs and holds 563 bitcoins worth about $29.3 million, according to a Dune dashboard created by Hildebert Mouiliere, aka Hildobby, a data scientist at VC firm Dragonfly.
VanEck and WisdomTree did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
