Bitcoin BTC -2.12% 's price rose Thursday, as the first spot bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. started trading after the Securities and Exchange Commission approved them yesterday. The price of the world's largest crypto currency by market capitalization rose 7.6% to $48,517 at 9:45 a.m.

Yahoo Finance showed both BlackRock's IBIT and Grayscale's GBTC as trending tickers. BlackRock appeared to be an earlier winner among the brand new funds, according to live volume data that shows trading volume for all the spot bitcoin ETFs hitting $1.5 billion at 10:16 a.m. ET.

"Only 20 min into trading and the volume is big with HALF A BILLION traded for the group (ex GBTC too) (outpacing $BITO by a lot) led by $IBIT (which is near lock to pass $1b) and $FBTC. Imp to note almost all the volume in first few days will convert to inflows," Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas said on X.

Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart said the ETFs crossed $1.2 billion of volume in the first 30 minutes of trading. 

"No way to know how much of this is flows," he said in a post on X. "We will potentially know this evening. Though I would bet a significant portion of it is indeed flows. Would also bet that a lot of the GBTC trading volume is outflows."

Volumes to come

All eyes will be on volumes, with Valkyrie co-founder and CIO Steven McClurg saying he expects $200 million to $400 million of investors’ funds coming to Valkyrie’s ETF, and all participants might see $4 billion to $5 billion of inflows over the first couple of weeks.

VanEck estimated that $1 billion of funds would flow into these products over the first few days, and $2.4 billion within a quarter. Galaxy anticipates inflows of $14 billion within the first year. Bitwise said it reckons the market for spot bitcoin ETFs will reach roughly $72 billion within five years.

(Updates with details throughout.)