The United States spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) experienced a historic $10 billion in trading volume on March 5, as Bitcoin surged to a new all-time high before plunging approximately 12% within the next five hours.
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas described the trading volume as “bananas numbers for ETFs under [two months] old,” according to a March 5 X post reporting the figures.
Bitcoin analyst Alessandro Ottaviani reported a slightly lower trading volume of $9.58 billion for the ETFs, still surpassing the previous record of $7.7 billion set on Feb. 28.
Among the ETFs, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) led with $3.7 billion in volume, followed by the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) with $2.8 billion and $2 billion respectively, according to Ottaviani.
Bitcoin experienced significant price fluctuations during the U.S. trading day, reaching a new peak of $69,200 around 3:00 pm UTC on March 5, before dropping 12% to a low of $60,860 approximately five hours later.
Bitcoin has partially recovered to $63,350 at the time of writing.
IBIT and FBTC both saw declines of around 8.6% on the day, with other spot Bitcoin ETFs registering similar price drops, as reported by Google Finance.
In response to the volatility, pseudonymous analyst Bit Paine humorously noted to newcomers to Bitcoin via ETFs that such price swings are “a monthly ritual during bull markets” aimed at weeding out “leveraged degenerates.”
Balchunas concurred, acknowledging the absence of trading safeguards like limit up and limit down rules and the Federal Reserve’s intervention seen in traditional markets.