Cryptocurrency investors waded back into the market last week, riding a surge in bitcoin.
Exchange-traded funds tracking bitcoin and ether attracted more than $3.2 billion last week, with iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (ticker IBIT) alone seeing a nearly $1.5 billion in inflows — the most this year, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. Other bitcoin-focused funds also saw meaningful infusions, with investors adding more than $620 million to ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) and roughly $574 million into Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC).
Meanwhile, ether products posted their first net weekly inflows since February, according to data from Wintermute.
The rally unfolded alongside a notable rise across risk assets, including the S&P 500, which last week gained 4.6% amid optimism over potential tariff deals. Bitcoin itself surged 10% to around $94,000, its best week since the days following the U.S. presidential election.
Crypto enthusiasts also point out bitcoin’s resilience vs. stocks during President Donald Trump’s trade war and the subsequent upheaval it’s caused in financial markets. The token is flat this year, compared with the S&P 500’s nearly 6% drop, a pattern that’s reignited calls that the cryptocurrency is acting as a new type of safe haven akin to gold, which has also rallied.
“Net spot ETF inflows, which are a barometer of institutional interest in bitcoin, have ramped up,” eToro’s Simon Peters wrote. “With gold at record highs, could investors also be seeing bitcoin, dubbed as ‘digital-gold’ due to its similar scarcity characteristics, as a potential safe haven or alternative asset to invest in if economic uncertainties continue on?”
IBIT, the largest bitcoin ETF with $56 billion in assets under management, has had consistent flows this year, even as markets heave and shudder as Trump waffles between different tariff policies. In the background, the president has made moves to more forcefully embrace cryptocurrency: He will have dinner with the top 220 holders of the Trump memecoin, the issuers of the cryptocurrency announced last week, spurring a spike in its price.
Meanwhile, as bitcoin surged in the wake of the election to above $100,000 at one point, several analysts have upped their long-term price projections for the coin.
Michael Saylor of Strategy, a renowned bitcoin bull, says he sees the coin going to $13 million by 2045. At an event hosted by crypto asset manager Bitwise last week, Saylor made the far-out projection that the IBIT ETF will grow to be bigger than funds tracking the world’s largest and most profitable companies.
“IBIT is a raging success — I’ll predict it will be the biggest ETF in the world in 10 years,” he said at the event. “It looks like it’s en route to be.”
But that claim was met with plenty of skepticism. The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) currently holds the No. 1 spot among all funds when measured by AUM, sporting more than $600 billion as of April 28. This year alone, it has taken in more than $51 billion, during a volatile stretch for the stock market. IBIT’s total AUM currently equals what VOO has drawn in this year, said Nate Geraci, president of The ETF Store, writing on X that it would be a “herculean feat for IBIT” to become the largest.
