By far one of the biggest milestones for the Bitcoin community in 2024 has been the approval of the spot Bitcoin ETFs back in January. It was a goal that industry stakeholders had been pursuing for years and when it was finally approved by the SEC, it felt like a collective win for the industry.
Now, months after they’ve been in operation, ETFs are facing some challenges as the last few days have seen $1.2 billion outflows. This has made some experts reconsider the state of the ETF sector and what this means for the industry moving forward.
Why The ETFs Are Important
When it comes to the success of Bitcoin as a crypto, much of the focus has been on its use cases and its investment vehicles. The former has seen the emergence of the token being used for things like gambling. Because it is the most valuable crypto in the world, we are seeing Bitcoin used to play all sorts of casino games and a market has emerged to cater to this need. It is not unusual to see more safe online casinos accepting BTC and this shows no signs of stopping.
We also have other use cases, such as buying goods and services and using them as a hedge against inflation. Then we have Bitcoin as an investment vehicle. Most investors buy and sell Bitcoin speculatively and the spot ETFs were a way to push Bitcoin even further into the mainstream as an asset class.
Through the spot ETFs, Bitcoin could be bought into by institutional investors while also enjoying high-level validation from the world of finance. To be fair, the crypto sector as a whole has benefited from the spot ETF approval. Bitcoin hit a new all-time price high this year and this has been attributed to the ETFs, as well as its recent halving, and other factors.
Billions of dollars worth of investments have flowed into the ETFs, which makes the recent outflow all the more notable.
Details About the Outflows
In the last 8 days, $1.2 billion have been taken out of the 11 listed spot Bitcoin ETFs. this represents the largest instance of outflows since the ETFs were even launched. This has coincided with the dip in the price of Bitcoin, which fell below $53,000 during the same period. As such, it can be speculated that investors are reacting to the market’s price.
At the same time, many have pointed out that the price of Bitcoin is known to dip around September and make a comeback of sorts in the months after. Bitcoin is notorious for its volatility and this is not out of the ordinary. What is new is the spot ETFs and as such, we’ve never seen them react to the price of Bitcoin quite like this.
What This Means
On the surface, it is easy to panic over the news of the outflows. However, the future of Bitcoin ETFs is still secure. First, the new outflows are still much lower than the net inflows. In the same way that some investors are pulling out their funds as the Bitcoin price takes a slump, more will put their funds in when the price recovers. Crypto veterans know at this point that the price will go up and down and the spot ETFs’ performance will only reflect this.
We also have to remember that ETFs (even those not based on crypto) see outflows all the time but continue to be popular in the market. Crypto ETFs have been especially successful because the underlying assets within them continue to make market gains and that won’t change because of a single Bitcoin price slump. In fact, crypto industry veterans will remember that Bitcoin, along with other tokens, have seen prolonged periods of winter that last months or even years before recovering.
Eventually, the token bounces back and we can expect this to be reflected in the performance of the spot Bitcoin ETFs.
Also adding to the optimism among investors is the fact that VanEck, one of the leading firms in the spot crypto ETF space, has announced the closure of its futures-based Ether ETF. This is due to its low performance in light of the spot ETFs. As the company has explained, investors’ demand has shifted to the spot ETFs and this has killed interest in the futures ETFs.
“The decision was made to liquidate the Fund based on an analysis of these factors and other operational considerations,” a statement from VanEck said.
With all these considered, spot crypto ETFs as a whole are still in good standing. Other tokens such as XRP and ADA have been rumoured to be getting theirs soon and we could close out 2024 with even more wins for the spot ETF space.