Splashy Canadian Bitcoin ETF Sees Inflows Slow as Price Drops

The initial flood of assets into North America's first exchange-traded fund (ETF) tracking bitcoin has slowed to a trickle.

Purpose Investments' Toronto-listed Bitcoin ETF, launched Feb. 19, held 10,064 BTC on Thursday. While that looks to be an impressive first-week growth, the pace of increase in holdings has slowed in the past three days.

The ETF has collected just 1,766 BTC since Tuesday versus 8,288 BTC in the first two trading days, according to data source Glassnode. In dollar terms, the AUM has increased by just $60 million in the past three days to $624 million compared to $564 million in the first two days.

Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst Eric Balchunas had predicted that the ETF's AUM would rise to $1 billion by the end of this week. Essentially, the fund needs to collect at least $376 million by Friday's closing bell. The ETF trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker “BTCC” and charges a management fee of 1%. Purpose's index information is provided by TradeBlock, a CoinDesk subsidiary.

The inflows have slowed in the wake of bitcoin's price pullback. The cryptocurrency peaked above $58,000 late Sunday and has been falling ever since. At press time, the cryptocurrency is down nearly 20% for the week at $46,300.

Also read: Canada's CI Global Files for What Would Be World's First Ether ETF

Nevertheless, inflows registered in the first week in BTC terms are significantly higher than bitcoin's average daily issuance (miner supply) of 900 seen over the past seven days.