Bitwise CIO says advisors adopting bitcoin ETFs 'faster' than any other exchange-traded fund in history

Bitwise Invest CIO Matt Hougan took to the social media platform X on Monday to counter a researcher's claim that investment advisors' adoption of spot bitcoin ETFs has been low.

"Investment advisors are adopting bitcoin ETFs faster than any new ETF in history," Hougan said in his post . BlackRock's spot BTC +4.64% fund "has attracted $1.5 billion in net flows from investment advisors. [Bianco] calls this 'small' because it's a fraction of the $46 billion that has flowed into bitcoin ETFs in total."

Hougan's comments were made in reply to a lengthy post from market research specialist Jim Bianco, who on Sunday took to X to say that both spot bitcoin ETFs have "not become a tool for tradfi or boomer adoption" and that financial advisors' adoption of the vehicles has been limited.

"Crypto-quant analysis suggests that most Spot BTC ETF inflows were from on-chain holders moving back to tradfi accounts, so very little 'new' money has entered the crypto space," said Bianco.

BlackRock's IBIT growing fast

Hougan has a different view when looking at the data.

"If you excluded all other flows, and just looked at the $1.5 billion linked to investment advisors, IBIT would be the 2nd fastest-growing ETF launched this year (excluding other BTC ETFs)," he said, adding that more than 300 exchange-traded funds have launched this year.

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas defended Hougan's view.

"Just IBIT's advisor allocations (which add up to $1.5 billion) [has] more organic inflows than any other ETF launched this year," he said on X.

Bitwise Invest's spot bitcoin ETF has about $2 billion in assets under management, according to The Block's Data Dashboard . BlackRock's IBIT fund is the market's largest with nearly $20 billion in AUM.