Bitcoin ETFs Eat Gold’s Lunch as IBIT Nears GLD’s Dominance

Wall Street’s crypto love affair hits a new milestone—Bitcoin ETFs are vacuuming up capital while the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) creeps up on the gold-backed GLD. Guess ’digital gold’ isn’t just a marketing term anymore.

Institutional money floods in as legacy finance finally admits what retail traders knew years ago. Meanwhile, gold bugs clutch their bullion bars and mutter about ’tulip mania’—ironic, coming from the asset that literally just sits there.

The iShares Bitcoin ETF, whose ticker symbol is IBIT, has had cumulative inflows of $48 billion and now hold over $71 billion in assets. It is followed by Fidelity’s FBTC, which has $21 billion, and Grayscale’s $21.7 billion. The other big funds are from Ark Invest, BitWise, and VanEck.

Interestingly, IBIT, 16 months old, is catching up to the SPDR Gold Shares ETF, which has been around since 2004. The GLD ETF has had $4.9 billion in inflows this year, bringing its total assets to $100 billion. As such, if the trend continues, it means that the IBIT ETF will flip GLD in the next few months or years.

Bitcoin ETFs may also pass their gold counterparts in the coming years. According to the World Gold Council, the global assets under management of gold ETFs have jumped to over $345 billion as the price rallies. 

Bitcoin has been in a strong uptrend this year. On Wednesday, it jumped to a record high of nearly $112,000. On Friday, it retreated to $107,500 after President Donald TRUMP threatened a 50% tariff on European goods and a 25% levy on Apple’s products.

Analysts remain optimistic that the Bitcoin price has more room to go, as the supply and demand dynamics help it. Demand from ETFs and corporates continues rising, while supply on exchanges keeps falling. Mining difficulty also increases, lowering the number of coins coming to the market.

Ark Invest analysts predict that BTC’s price will jump to $2.4 million by the end of the decade, while Standard Chartered sees it hitting $200,000 this year.