TL;DR:
- The BlackRock IBIT fund reduced its assets under management to $60 billion after briefly touching a temporary peak of $100 billion in October.
- The SPDR Gold Trust fund experienced a similar trajectory in 2011 of a boom and subsequent extended stagnation that lasted eight years before recovering its peak levels.
- US cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds recorded their first positive net inflows last week since early May.
Senior ETF analyst for Bloomberg, Eric Balchunas, pointed out this Friday that Bitcoin ETFs could be replicating the historical boom-and-bust trajectory experienced in their time by gold-based exchange-traded funds.
Bitcoin ETFs Likely to Mirror Gold's History of Triumph and Pain.. New from me on how gold ETFs' 22-year history may offer the closest roadmap yet for Bitcoin ETF investors. Both are wrappers around non-yielding stores of value that generate no cash flow, leaving investor… pic.twitter.com/3C4tZYPLCp
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) July 17, 2026
Historical parallelism between gold and cryptocurrencies
Eric Balchunas posted on X that Bitcoin-based funds and iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) share a structural nature with the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD). He stated that both financial instruments function as wrappers around stores of value that do not generate yields, cash flows, coupons, or direct operating earnings. Balchunas’ projection suggests that the performance of these products depends primarily on investor sentiment, unlike stock or bond markets that have corporate or government backing.
At the close of this week, the IBIT fund manages a figure close to $60 billion in assets. This volume represents a decrease compared to the $100 billion threshold that BlackRock’s financial instrument briefly reached during this past October.
The comparative technical analysis takes historical data from 2011 as a reference. In that year, the GLD fund temporarily surpassed SPY to become the largest ETF in the world, before entering a period of stagnation that lasted for eight years.
Supply factors and market behavior
Data from the Bloomberg platform indicates that the limited expansion in the physical supply of gold and Bitcoin can cause accelerated spikes in demand. However, Balchunas qualified that such interest tends to manifest through cyclical and intermittent waves rather than building linear and constant growth.
This Friday, Bitcoin was trading around $63,000. A figure that reflects a contraction of at least 30% so far in 2026 and a 50% reduction compared to the all-time high set in October. For its part, spot gold traded near $4,000 per ounce on Friday, accumulating a 7% drop in the current year, but maintaining a 19% increase in the comparison of the last 12 months.
BlackRock’s digital assets division reported this week that its total assets under management decreased 40% year-on-year during the second quarter. The figure stood at $49 billion, compared to the $80 billion recorded in the same period of the previous year.
Despite the general downward trend observed over the course of the year, official capital flow records show a recent stabilization. During the last full week of trading, Bitcoin and Ether ETFs in the US market broke their negative streak by reporting weekly net inflows for the first time since the early days of May.
