Deniz 
As risk-averse investors persisted in avoiding digital assets, U.S.-spot bitcoin ETFs experienced their seventh day in a row of outflows on Thursday.
According to Farside Investors, a firm based in the United Kingdom, eleven separate startup funds have lost over $1 billion since last Wednesday, with yesterday’s loss amounting to $35 million.
The products have seen a dramatic shift in fortunes, as they were among the most lucrative ETF debuts in the last 30 years, attracting nearly $11 billion in investments since the SEC authorized 10 funds on January 10. Their current asset value is close to $55 billion.
With about $16.5 billion in assets and $15.5 billion in inflows, the largest of these is the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) from BlackRock Inc. The fastest exchange-traded fund (ETF) to amass $10 billion in assets, IBIT, saw its initial outflows on Wednesday and then saw no flows at all on Thursday.
On Thursday, $55 million left Grayscale’s Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC), the biggest Bitcoin spot fund with $17.5 billion in assets. Along with IBIT and nine other products, it began trading on January 11 and has since lost about $17.1 billion.
Bitcoin ETFs: Friend or Foe?
GBTC sets itself apart from its competitors in the industry due to its unique structure as a trust conversion. However, it also stands out for having the highest cost in the market, which amounts to a significant 1.5%.
Coincidentally, with the outflows, the price of bitcoin has fallen. In the last seven days, the market cap of the most valuable cryptocurrency fell by 2.8%, according to data compiled by CoinMarketCap.
Even though the market was generally trending downward, the debut of the first-spot cryptocurrency ETFs on the Hong Kong exchange brought in roughly $300 million on day one.
On Thursday, BNP Paribas bought almost $41,000 worth of IBIT in the first quarter, as revealed in an SEC filing.
“I still think we’ll see institutional investors tiptoe into the crypto market through ETFs and/or derivatives, with some corporations venturing to hold BTC on their balance sheets,” stated market analyst Noelle Acheson in her Crypto Is Macro Now newsletter. However, at this stage, it will only be a trickle, which may cause prices to remain flat for some time.