BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) closed Friday with $100.6 billion in assets under management, becoming the fastest ETF in any category to cross the $100 billion threshold. The achievement, reached just 27 months after its January 2024 debut, eclipses the prior record set by SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), which took 28 months to reach the same milestone and another six months to overtake the second-fastest QQQ.
IBIT's milestone caps a week of inflows totaling $1.42 billion across the U.S. spot bitcoin ETF complex, with combined assets across the eleven funds now standing at $214 billion. The achievement effectively ratifies the institutional thesis: 78% of IBIT's subscriber base is now classified as registered investment advisors, family offices, or pension allocations, versus 41% at launch.
Wall Street's Mainstreaming Trade
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who as recently as 2018 dismissed bitcoin as "an index of money laundering," used the firm's Q1 earnings call to describe the asset as "an instrument of monetary diversification on par with sovereign gold reserves." Fidelity's FBTC and ARK's ARKB ranked second and third in U.S. bitcoin ETF assets at $32.4 billion and $9.1 billion respectively. Grayscale's legacy GBTC, once the dominant vehicle, has shrunk to $14.8 billion after persistent outflows tied to its 1.5% expense ratio.
Vanguard remains the only large issuer without a spot bitcoin product, a stance CEO Salim Ramji reiterated last week: "We have no plans to enter this market." Industry observers estimate that decision has cost Vanguard roughly $48 billion in foregone AUM through the