BlackRock's IBIT And GLD Rejoin Top 10 Most-Traded ETFs As 'Debasement Trade' Challenges ‘AI Mania’

BlackRock cut the minimum size for a Bitcoin-to-ETF swap to $1 million in July, from $25 million when the process first became available.

• GLD and IBIT are back in the top 10 most-traded U.S. ETFs, pushing semiconductor funds out of the rankings, Eric Balchunas reported on Tuesday.
• He posted terminal data showing GLD was third with $4.02 billion by value traded, followed by IBIT against SOXL and SMH.
• Separately, BlackRock’s Robbie Mitchnick told Bloomberg that IBIT has helped facilitate more than $5 billion of Bitcoin-to-ETF conversions.

Gold (XAU) and Bitcoin (BTC) funds are back in the top 10 most traded U.S. exchange-traded funds (ETFs), in what Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas called “yet another sign the debasement trade is beginning to replace AI mania.”

“Store of value frenemies” SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) and iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) were back in the top 10 Monday, knocking out some of the semiconductor ETFs that ruled the list all summer, Balchunas said on Tuesday. Those funds were “still punching above weight but not as much,” he added.

According to Bloomberg terminal data, GLD ranked third by value traded at $4.02 billion and IBIT seventh at $2.24 billion. Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares (SOXL) was fourth at $3.71 billion, iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) was ninth at $2.06 billion, and VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) was tenth at $2.02 billion. Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) was the top performer at $11.19 billion, followed by SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) at $10.75 billion.

Whales Moving Into ETFs

This comes at a time when Wall Street has been making it cheaper and easier for investors to swap large crypto holdings for ETF shares, letting them keep Bitcoin exposure while moving wealth from private wallets into mainstream finance. 

BlackRock’s IBIT helped facilitate more than $5 billion of such conversions, up from more than $3 billion when Bloomberg reported on the trend last October,” said Robbie Mitchnick, the asset manager’s Head of Digital Asset Management, to Bloomberg. BlackRock reduced the minimum transaction size to $1 million from $25 million in July when the process first became available.

"It's going to keep growing because we keep expanding the access," Mitchnick told Bloomberg. "People see things happen in the outside world, whether it's kidnappings, ransom, custody failures, that motivate them to make this switch for all or some of their holdings." Because Bitcoin was exchanged rather than first sold for cash, the shift could be accomplished without necessarily triggering an immediate capital-gains tax bill, depending on the investor's circumstances.

iShares Bitcoin Trust stock was trading almost flat during pre-market hours. On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment around IBIT remained in the ‘extremely bullish’ zone, while chatter around it stayed at ‘high’ levels over the past day.

Bitcoin’s price fell nearly 2% in the past 24 hours, trading around $78,946. On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around BTC remained in the ‘extremely bullish’ zone, while chatter stayed at ‘extremely high’ levels over the past day.

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