Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) continues to impact the bitcoin market by offloading an additional 15,986.29 BTC to CEX exchange-traded stakes. Over the past 24 hours, the fund's assets decreased from 552,681.22 BTC on Tuesday to 536,694.93 BTC on Wednesday.
Grayscale held 617,079.99 BTC at the beginning of January. Since then, 80,385.06 BTC has been withdrawn from the fund, totaling $3.19 billion. On Tuesday, GBTC again took the top position in terms of trading volume among ten spot bitcoin exchange traded funds (ETFs), with $762 million in volume.
The total volume of all ten ETFs reached $1.6 billion on Jan. 23. Fidelity Bitcoin Index Fund (FBTC) ranked second with a total trading volume of $357 million. Blackrock's daily stock update on Wednesday showed that Invesco Bitcoin Strategy ETF (IBIT) holds 44,004.52 BTC, valued at $1.74 billion. FBTC Fidelity holds 38,149.16 BTC, valued at $1.51 billion. BITB Bitwise manages 11,858.63 BTC, while Vaneck's HODL ETF includes about 2,715.77 BTC.
Thus, these nine bitcoin ETFs contain a total of 118,019.58 BTC, valued at $4.69 billion. Interestingly, the 10 new bitcoin ETFs purchased 118,000 bitcoins worth $4.69 billion in the OTC markets, with no significant impact on the bitcoin price. While Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) sold 80k BTC worth $3.19 billion on real exchanges, having a direct impact on the price of BTC.
This raises interest in the market carousel mechanism, where 10 funds buy bitcoin off-exchange and one of them sells almost as much on the exchange. The question arises as to whether this dynamic is random or part of Grayscale's strategy. Either way, what is happening can be seen as an example of using old, time-tested technologies to manage market dynamics in an environment where cryptocurrency innovations are competing with the traditional financial system.