Bitcoin Bullishness Continues as ETFs Add Nearly $1 Billion Ahead of Election

Just over one week until the U.S. presidential election, Bitcoin investors’ bullishness continues. 

After continuing to break records, the new Bitcoin exchange traded-funds (ETFs) have attracted more cash: Last week, nearly $1 billion entered funds giving investors exposure to the biggest cryptocurrency, data from European asset manager CoinShares showed Monday.

The firm points to buzz from the election, as former U.S. President Donald Trump leads against current Vice President Kamala Harris in some polls and has a commanding lead on crypto prediction market platform Polymarket. Ex-President Trump has explicitly said he would help the digital asset industry if he wins. 

“We believe that current Bitcoin prices and flows are heavily influenced by U.S. politics, with the recent surge in inflows likely linked to the Republicans’ poll gains,” CoinShares’ Monday report said. 

Of all the inflow data that CoinShares tracks—which includes numbers from ETFs in Europe and Asia—Bitcoin remained the main focus last week. Investors cashed out of funds giving exposure to Solana and Ethereum last week, CoinShares noted, but Bitcoin funds saw surging gains.

In total, speculators pumped $920 million into Bitcoin funds worldwide. The new funds trading on U.S. stock exchanges brought in most of that number. Money also left funds aiming to short Bitcoin, or bet on its price to go down in the future. 

Bitcoin is now trading for $68,759 after reaching a high of $69,217 per coin earlier today, according to CoinGecko. That’s a one-week high for the leading cryptocurrency.

The Securities and Exchange Commission in January gave the green light to allow 10 Bitcoin ETFs to start trading in the U.S. and the products have been wildly popular, amassing more than $20 billion worth of total inflows so far this year. BlackRock’s fund has been the biggest launch across all new ETFs over the last four years, per Bloomberg data.

Edited by Andrew Hayward