New Bitcoin ETFs did in 3 days what Gold took 36 days to achieve with $1.8 billion in assets

One of the most common comparisons we’ve seen concerning the launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States is the one with the launch of the first gold ETF (GLD) in 2004. Interestingly, comparing the two asset classes’ premieres through their daily attestations reveals some illuminating data.

For clarity and transparency, all data below excludes the Grayscale and ProShares BITO ETFs. Adding Grayscale skews the data due to the enormous volume and substantial value of assets under management due to its conversion from a trust. BITO is removed due to it not being a spot ETF. The BTC Value was calculated using the BRR New York Variant reference rate for each day, as per the ETF prospectuses.

From the table below, we can see that Bitcoin was able to completely obliterate gold’s historic launch volume. On its first day, GLD saw around $265 million in volume, whereas Bitcoin saw almost ten times that, at $2.3 billion. Moreover, while GLD saw a total of $1.32 billion traded, Bitcoin ETFs have seen $3.69 billion in volume.

Interestingly, while Bitcoin ETFs have recorded much higher volumes and inflows, the price of the underlying assets saw opposite patterns. Gold rose by 1.3%, while Bitcoin declined by 7.4% during the first three traded days of the relative ETFs. However, just some 12 days after GLD’s debut, gold recorded a local high which was not then surpassed for more than six months.

Below is an extension of GLD’s launch to showcase the first 36 trading days, with the current data for Bitcoin retained for context. With the combined Bitcoin ETF assets under management value at around $1.8 billion, excluding Grayscale and ProShares BITO, it is around $550 million ahead of where Gold was on day three.

However, if you look through the chart, you can see that it took until day 36 for GLD to catch up with this $550 million deficit,