Large corporations, major wirehouses gearing up to buy Bitcoin: Bitwise

Institutions representing “trillions of dollars in assets” are preparing to buy into spot Bitcoin (BTC $69,499) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) by the end of June, said crypto-native asset manager Bitwise.

In a March 9 investment memo sent out to investors, Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan said Bitwise was involved in “serious due diligence” discussions with large corporations, major wirehouses and institutional consultants looking to increase their exposure to Bitcoin in the coming months.

Hougan said that Bitwise had already confirmed that a wide array of individual retail investors, family offices, hedge funds and venture capital firms were looking to snap up more allocation into spot Bitcoin ETFs.

“Just as important as who is buying today is who will be buying tomorrow,” he said.

The outsized institutional appetite for Bitcoin ETFs has already been credited by several analysts for spurring the price of Bitcoin more than 50% from $45,603 since their inception on Jan. 11 to a price of $68,583 at the time of publication, per TradingView.

While Bitcoin ETFs have already generated nearly $9 billion in net inflows since their launch, Hougan said he expects inflows into the 10 approved spot Bitcoin ETF products to accelerate further heading into the second half of the year.

“These are massive categories representing trillions of dollars in assets,” said Hougan.

Based on current trends, I’d suspect we’ll see our first significant flows from these three groups in Q2 2024, and I think those flows will accelerate throughout the year as these investors become more comfortable with the new products.

This isn’t the first time that Hougan has expressed his bullishness for Bitcoin ETFs. On Feb. 29, he said he expected there to be an even “bigger wave” of institutional capital into the products, saying this would push Bitcoin’s price “substantially higher.”

According to BitMEX Research data, Bitcoin ETFs have attracted net inflows of $8.89 billion since their inception, with BlackRock’s iShares IBIT fund leading the charge on new inflows.

Bitcoin ETFs have attracted over $8.89 billion in flows since inception. Source: BitMEX Research on X

“These are bananas numbers for ETFs under [two months] old,” Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said in a March 5 X post reporting earlier figures.

On March 8, BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF surpassed business intelligence firm MicroStrategy in terms of total Bitcoin held, touting 197,943 BTC on its balance sheet, worth over $13.5 billion at current prices.