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Since their approval in January 2024, Spot Bitcoin ETFs have continued to gain traction in the United States, with issuers purchasing hundreds of thousands of BTC as their popularity has spread. This has led to a significant hoarding of BTC by these issuers as BlackRock leads the charge. Given their buying spree so far, the number of BTC held by Spot Bitcoin ETFs has increased and almost reached the million mark.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs now hold 924,768 BTC
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission approved a total of 12 Spot Bitcoin ETFs for trading in January 2024. Now, just eight months later, these ETFs have managed to acquire more than 4% of the supply total Bitcoin. Together, this makes Spot Bitcoin ETFs one of the largest holders of BTC.
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So far, BlackRock’s IBIT has been one of the biggest buyers of BTC, even surpassing Grayscale’s GBTC, which had a head start of 600,000 BTC. Currently, Grayscale holds over 350,000 BTC, making the company one of the largest holders of Bitcoin.
Grayscale still holds second place when it comes to the number of BTC held. However, the Bitcoin fund has seen more outflows than inflows since January, losing more than half of its reserve before the Spot Bitcoin ETF was approved. Now, Grayscale holds less than 250,000 BTC after losing over $20 billion to other Spot Bitcoin ETFs due to their lower fees.
Other Spot Bitcoin ETFs such as Fidelity FBTC and Ark Invest/21Shares ARKB have reached almost 50,000 BTC. So far, the funds have managed to raise 924,768 BTC, putting their total holdings very close to the one million BTC mark. In total, Spot Bitcoin ETFs now represent 4,685 of the total Bitcoin supply.
Top addresses with the largest holdings
The first Bitcoin wallet with the largest BTC holdings still remains the Satoshi Nakamoto wallet with 1.1 million BTC. However, this wallet remained inactive for a long time and was often excluded from the list of best Bitcoin wallets due to its inactivity.
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According to the BitInfoCharts website, the former Binance wallet, with 248,598 BTC, worth over $16.3 billion, tops the Bitcoin rich list. Next is the Bitfinex Hack Recovery wallet with 94,643 BTC, with $6.2 billion. The Mt Gox Hack wallet contains 79,957 BTC, the third largest at $5.2 billion.
The wallet containing the BTC confiscated during the collapse of Silk Road with 69,370 BTC is in fourth place with a value of 4.56 billion dollars, and the Binance BTCB Reserve wallet contains 68,200 BTC, worth 4 .49 billion dollars.
Featured image created with Dall.E, chart from Tradingview.com
