‘East vs West:’ How Hong Kong Bitcoin ETF can cover U.S. losses, per execs

• Hong Kong ETF debut led to a record $12.4M in daily trading volume. 
• Hong Kong Bitcoin ETFs’ $141M inflows will taper off US negative flows — Analyst.

On the first day of trading, the 30th of April, Hong Kong ETFs hit a total of $12.4 million in trading volume.

The day-one performance was reportedly strong in terms of AUM (assets under management), especially for ChinaAMC, which netted over $141 million in AUM. 

Reacting to the performance, Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas noted that the $12.4M was significant when translated into US equivalents. Part of his post on X (formerly Twitter) read, 

“All total traded $12.4m, a LOT for that market- equiv of $1.6b in US. Assets much stronger tho: China AMC reporting $141m in assets (equiv to $22b in US) with $121m of it in BTC and $20m of it ETH, so ETH grabbed 14%.”

How did Bitcoin perform against Ethereum?

Hong Kong saw the debut of six spot-Bitcoin [BTC] and Ethereum [ETH] ETFs, the first of their kind in the Asian region. 

The six products were drawn from ChinaAMC, Bosera, Hashkey, and Harvest. However, day one results show Bitcoin grabbed more volume and AUM.

In the ChinaAMC case, Bitcoin dominated with $121 million in assets (86%) compared to ETH’s $21 million. 

On the trading volume front, Bosera Hashkey Bitcoin ETF recorded HK$12.44 million, while its ETH ETF grabbed HK$2.48 million during the first day of trading. 

For Harvest, spot BTC ETF volume hit HK$17.89M as ETH ETF netted HK$4.95M. Ergo, a similar pattern was recorded across three issuers, BTC had more trading volumes than ETH.

However, ChinaAMC dominated the overall trading volumes on the first day, accounting for over 55% of total BTC turnover. 

After adjusting the performance to the US spot BTC ETFs, Balchunas underscored that Hong Kong’s debut was a stellar performance. 

“East vs West: The US did $740m in assets and $4.6b in trading. These are far below that, but if you adjust for the size of their mkt it is dif story: equiv of $25b+ and $1.6b, respectively.”

Hong Kong spot Bitcoin ETF’s first-day performance is pale to US counterparts on the same metric.

However, Balchunas emphasized that Hong Kong Bitcoin ETFs’ $141 million inflows will help offset the current negative US flows. 

In the meantime, the BTC price retested the range-low around $60K again. More volatility is expected because this week is action-packed. 

Notably, the FOMC meeting and the US Treasury’s Quarterly Refunding will take center stage in a few hours, offsetting the crypto trends for the second half of 2024.

However, market watchers expect the latter to have more weight because it will determine the amount of liquidity injected into the market.