Bitwise CIO says advisors adopting bitcoin ETFs 'faster' than any other exchange-traded fund in history

Bitwise Invest CIO Matt Hougan took to the social media platform X on Monday to counter a researcher's claim that investment advisors' adoption of spot bitcoin ETFs has been low.

"Investment advisors are adopting bitcoin ETFs faster than any new ETF in history," Hougan said in his post. BlackRock's spot BTC fund "has attracted $1.5 billion in net flows from investment advisors. [Bianco] calls this 'small' because it's a fraction of the $46 billion that has flowed into bitcoin ETFs in total."

Hougan's comments were made in reply to a lengthy post from market research specialist Jim Bianco, who on Sunday took to X to say that both spot bitcoin ETFs have "not become a tool for tradfi or boomer adoption" and that financial advisors' adoption of the vehicles has been limited.

"Crypto-quant analysis suggests that most Spot BTC ETF inflows were from on-chain holders moving back to tradfi accounts, so very little 'new' money has entered the crypto space," said Bianco.

BlackRock's IBIT growing fast

Hougan has a different view when looking at the data.

"If you excluded all other flows, and just looked at the $1.5 billion linked to investment advisors, IBIT would be the 2nd fastest-growing ETF launched this year (excluding other BTC ETFs)," he said, adding that more than 300 exchange-traded funds have launched this year.

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas defended Hougan's view.

"Just IBIT's advisor allocations (which add up to $1.5 billion) [has] more organic inflows than any other ETF launched this year," he said on X.

Bitwise Invest's spot bitcoin ETF has about $2 billion in assets under management, according to The Block's Data Dashboard. BlackRock's IBIT fund is the market's largest with nearly $20 billion in AUM.