BlackRock’s IBIT spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund hit record daily inflows of $520.2 million on Tuesday amid an ongoing surge in the price of bitcoin.

IBIT’s inflows yesterday were 5% higher than the previous $493.1 million record set on Feb. 13, eclipsing the $519.8 million total net inflows registered on Monday for all U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs combined, according to BitMEX Research data.

On Monday, BlackRock’s usually dominant ETF had slipped to third place by inflows, registering just $111.8 million. Fidelity’s FBTC led Monday’s inflows, adding $243.3 million, with Ark Invest 21 Shares’ ARKB in second place, generating $130.6 million.

However, in what became something of a super Tuesday for BlackRock’s bitcoin fund, it reasserted its inflow dominance, with Fidelity’s FBTC some way behind in second place on $126 million and Bitwise’s BITB third on $18.4 million.

Net inflows for all the spot bitcoin ETFs reached $576.8 million on Tuesday — the highest in two weeks — despite $125.6 million in outflows from Grayscale’s converted GBTC fund — which rose significantly again following Monday’s record low outflows of $22.4 million. Total net inflows since the ETFs launched on Jan. 11 now stand at $6.7 billion.

“Another monster ETF day. Over half-a-billy in IBIT alone. We now have a new reflexivity wheel at play. The more bitcoin goes up, the more tradfi asset managers have to allocate to the ETFs, because they now no longer have the excuse of 'inaccessibility' and 'regulatory risk,'” Charles Edwards, founder of bitcoin and digital asset hedge fund Capriole Investments, posted on X. “For the foreseeable future this is a massive flywheel for managers to hedge against underperformance risk and means number is going a lot higher.”

BlackRock’s IBIT breaks daily trading volume record again

BlackRock’s IBIT also set a new $1.36 billion daily trading volume record on Tuesday, breaking the $1.33 billion high it had reached just the day before, according to The Block’s data dashboard. A total of $3.15 billion was traded across all the spot bitcoin ETFs yesterday — the third largest day by volume since trading began. 

“Another intense volume day for the nine with well over $3 billion traded. IBIT broke its personal record again with $1.3 billion (for context, that's more than most large-cap U.S. stocks trade),” Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas said. “I don't know if this is a new normal or some kind of short-term algo/arb-related burst.”

“Also interesting, IBIT saw over 100,000 individual trades today. It was doing 30-60k the whole time up until Tuesday,” Balchunas added. “It's like it found a new gear over Presidents Day weekend. I thought maybe it was just pent up volume due to the long weekend but it did even more today so there goes that theory.”

Cumulative trading volume for all spot bitcoin ETFs is now approaching $60 billion.

On Monday, the newborn nine U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs — excluding Grayscale’s converted GBTC fund — surpassed 300,000 BTC in assets under management for the first time.

Bitcoin BTC -3.93% is currently trading at $59,233, according to The Block's price page. The largest cryptocurrency by market cap gained a further 5% over the last 24 hours. Bitcoin is now up by more than 15% over the past week and 40% year-to-date — just $10,000 (or approximately 15%) away from its prior all-time high of around $69,000 set in November 2021.

BTC/USD price chart. Image: The Block/TradingView.