IBIT and FBTC ETFs hit $10 billion AUM in weeks, smashing previous record of three years: analyst

Quick Take

  • JEPQ previously held the record for the fastest exchange-traded fund, reaching $10 billion in assets under management (AUM) in 647 trading days, taking around three years. 
  • BlackRock’s IBIT and Fidelity’s FBTC passed $10 billion AUM in 49 and 77 trading days, respectively. 

The spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) from BlackRock and Fidelity beat the previous record for a fund reaching $10 billion in assets under management in a fraction of the amount of time it took the previous record-holder, as noted by Bloomberg's senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas on the social media platform X.

"Prior to the bitcoin ETFs, the record speed for an ETF to reach $10 billion in assets was held by JEPQ who did it in 647 trading days (nearly three years). IBIT got there in 49 days, FBTC in 77 days," Balchunas wrote

JEPQ is the JPMorgan Nasdaq Equity Premium Income ETF. It is an actively managed fund that uses the Nasdaq-100 Index as a benchmark, trades equity-linked notes and sells call options to provide income to its holders, according to Yahoo Finance. JEPQ shares trade at $53.42 as of 10:30 a.m. ET (14:30 UTC) on May 10, seeing year-to-date returns of 10.14%. Its net assets are $12.37 billion after launching on May 3, 2022. 

BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust IBIT and the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund FBTC launched on Jan. 11, 2024. Both funds give investors exposure to bitcoin's price movements while omitting the need to hold the asset itself.

IBIT crossed $10 billion in total inflows on March 11, 2024, and $15 billion in total inflows on April 12.

IBIT maintained $17.28 billion in assets under management as of May 6, according to The Block's Data Dashboard. 

FBTC became the second bitcoin ETF behind IBIT to reach $1 billion inflows on Jan. 19, The Block previously reported. FBTC crossed $10 billion in assets under management on March 28. The fund saw its record inflow of $473 million on March 8. The Block's Data Dashboard shows FBTC's inflows reached nearly $100 million on May 6. 

Both IBIT and FBTC are among the largest spot bitcoin ETFs by market share. IBIT holds 43.98%, and FBTC comes third with 18.34% behind Grayscale's GBTC. 


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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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