Much of GBTC's outflows come from Genesis selling shares, says analyst

Quick Take

  • Genesis appears to be selling its GBTC shares to buy bitcoin, according to an ETF analyst. 
  • Bitcoin’s price fell below $64,000 on March 22. 

GBTC's notable outflows this week are likely due to Genesis, says an exchange-traded fund (ETF) analyst. 

Bitcoin's price fell below $64,000 on March 22, and it seems that the digital asset financial firm Genesis is trading in its GBTC shares to buy the dip, says Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg. 

"The nine new Bitcoin ETFs have taken in about $1.2 billion in past 5 days as price declined 8%," Balchunas said on the social media platform X. "GBTC had outflows yes, but it is largely Genesis (we know this for fact), who is simply exchanging GBTC shares for spot BTC, so net neutral event (plus GBTC is all pre-ETF money). Add it up, the ETFs have been net buyers of BTC (and none of the new money has left in fact more has come in). As usual, when it comes to selloffs, the call is coming from inside the house."

An X user also connected 16,800 BTC entering two of Genesis's wallets may have been derived from GBTC outflows.

RELATED INDICES

GBTC experienced a record daily outflow of $642.5 million on March 18, with $1.84 billion of total outflows between March 18 and March 21, according to The Block's Data Dashboard. 

GBTC is a converted spot bitcoin ETF issued by the digital asset management firm Grayscale Investments


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About Author

MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.

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