Over the past day, the Grayscale GBTC exchange-traded fund (ETF) has sold a record amount of 20,803.83 BTC for $867.98 million. This is the most significant reduction in GBTC reserves since January 11, 2024, when it became a publicly traded ETF.
Nevertheless, Grayscale’s GBTC remains the largest Bitcoin ETF with 502,712.60 BTC in its reserves, valued at $21.10 billion.
Since January 12, 2024, GBTC has sold a total of 114,367.39 BTC, equivalent to $4.77 billion. The fund has also demonstrated significant trading activity, dominating the market on Friday with $659.74 million out of a total trading volume of $1.68 billion across all ten spot Bitcoin ETFs.
GBTC has led the market in all 11 trading sessions since the launch of the new spot Bitcoin ETFs. The highest trading volume was recorded on January 11 at $2.29 billion, while the lowest was on January 25 with a volume of $501.49 million.
As of today, the total trading volume for all ten ETFs is $25.36 billion, with GBTC accounting for $16.15 billion, representing 63.68% of the total volume since January 11, 2024.
In total, Grayscale has poured 114,000 BTC into the exchange market in two weeks, amounting to $4.77 billion.
Last week, former Bitmex CEO Arthur Hayes commented on this: “The first argument for the recent Bitcoin downturn is the outflow of funds from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). This argument is false because if you subtract the outflow from GBTC against the inflow into recently registered spot Bitcoin ETFs, as of January 22, the net inflow will be $820 million.”
Indeed, the inflow into the new 10 Bitcoin ETFs exceeded the BTC sold by GBTC, 114,000 bitcoins. However, Arthur Hayes, a well-known joker who was once the CEO of Bitmex, is lying this time as well.
Hayes knows well that if the new Bitcoin ETF funds bought their BTC on OTC markets and from miners, GBTC dumped its bitcoins for almost $5 billion directly on Coinbase and other major exchanges.
Furthermore, Arthur Hayes shared his “forecast” for the price of Bitcoin in March 2024. From his perspective, BTC will find support in the range of $30,000 to $35,000.
Hayes’ argument is based on the impact of the expiration of the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) on Bitcoin. This event won’t be positive, as the Federal Reserve is expected to lower rates to a level pushing 10-year Treasury yields into the range of 2% to 3%.
On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve announced that the Bank Term Funding Program for Banks will stop issuing new loans, as planned, on March 11. This will be a negative signal for the price of Bitcoin, which is expected to drop to around $33,000, possibly even to $30,000.
However, this forecast should be approached with caution. Those who followed Hayes’ activities as the CEO of Bitmex should understand that usually all his signals and predictions worked out in the opposite direction in 99% of cases.