Bitcoin volume jumps as us spot ETFs tied to token begin trading

That’s the highest since March 21 last year, when the token rallied as the collapses of banks like Silvergate Capital Corp. and Silicon Valley Bank rocked confidence in the traditional financial system.

Bitcoin trading jumped to an almost 10-month high as investors geared up for Wall Street’s opening bell, when the US’s first exchange-traded funds investing directly in the biggest cryptocurrency will become widely available.

Daily trading volume for Bitcoin across cryptocurrency exchanges reached $52 billion as of 7.15 a.m. in New York on Thursday, according to data from CoinGecko. That’s the highest since March 21 last year, when the token rallied as the collapses of banks like Silvergate Capital Corp. and Silicon Valley Bank rocked confidence in the traditional financial system.

Bitcoin’s price advanced as much as 3.8% to reach an intraday high of $47,705 on Thursday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, buoyed by the approval of 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs by the US Securities and Exchange Commission after markets closed on Wednesday.

US trading in newly-launched ETFs like BlackRock Inc.’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (ticker IBIT) starts on Thursday morning. Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (ticker GBTC), which was converted to an ETF from a unit trust, saw 19,000 shares change hands in premarket trading as of 7:15 a.m. in New York.

“The ETF is effectively a watershed moment for financial advisers who now must have an opinion on this asset-class,” said Sui Chung, chief executive of data provider CF Benchmarks, which supplies indexes for several of the approved ETFs. “They might still not recommend it to their clients, but the fact it’s now available through a regulated product means they must at least have a viewpoint. This could open the door to a much more steady flow of interest and flows into the asset-class."