BlackRock ETF Trade in Full Effect for Bitcoin

According to on-chain analyst William Clemente, there has been a surge of US investors investing in Bitcoin (BTC) following the announcement of BlackRock’s exchange-traded fund (ETF) bid.

Clemente shared with BTC enthusiast Anthony Pompliano in an interview that there are three indications that US institutions have been actively acquiring the leading cryptocurrency since BlackRock’s announcement of their application for a spot-based Bitcoin ETF.

Clemente observes the trading sessions throughout the day and indicates the increased market activity of participants in the United States.

“We can see that the ETF trade has been in full effect across several different things. But who’s been primarily putting that trade on? It appears that it is US-based entities…”

He continued and said the following:

“There are two things that I look at as evidence of that. The first is what’s called cumulative return by session that we can look at from Velo data… We have it broken down into the EU, APAC and then US trading sessions. What we can see is that, especially since the BlackRock filing but even slightly beforehand, we can see that the US has been more actively bidding BTC relative to those other trading sessions.“

Clemente also says that Bitcoin has been trading “marginally higher” on Coinbase compared to other exchanges, pointing to the increased involvement of US-based firms.

The on-chain analyst is currently monitoring the open interest for BTC futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME).

As per Clemente’s observations, the open interest for Bitcoin futures has significantly increased on this global derivatives marketplace since BlackRock’s ETF application.

This suggests that US institutions are increasingly gaining exposure to BTC.

“The last piece of evidence as well is looking at CME futures open interest. So this looks at the total number of futures contracts outstanding on the CME. Who usually trades on the CME? It’s not crypto degenerates that are looking to punt on leverage. It’s US-based traditional type firms. We can see a clear jump in CME futures open interest following the BlackRock ETF (application), about a billion dollars (worth) of open interest was added in that time period.”