BlackRock’s $IBIT cracks top 20 ETFs by AUM at >$90B

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has surged into the top 20 U.S. ETFs by assets under management, now reporting net assets of approximately $90.46 billion. $IBIT was the fastest ETF of all time to cross $70 billion AUM (341 days). - link 

OUR TAKE: Move over sats. Bitcoin’s new sub-unit is $IBIT.

Just 4 years ago Larry Fink implied that he agreed with Jamie Dimon after the JPMorgan CEO called Bitcoin “worthless.” In January 2024, Blackrock launched their Bitcoin ETF, their most successful ETF product at launch in the history of the firm.

$IBIT joins the ranks of traditional ETFs, mostly market indices or large caps like Vanguard’s Growth and Value ETFs.

It’s the only one besides gold which is focused on a single asset rather than a basket of assets like Core S&P equities.

Most other ETFs such as Vanguard’s Mid-Cap and High Dividend funds took decades to reach the $60 billion mark, but $IBIT did it in less than a year.

Now at $90 billion AUM, $IBIT has grown faster than any broad market or commodity ETF in history.

The rest of the Bitcoin ETF cohort has done quite well, but it’s really the Blackrock show here. $IBIT is nearly 3x the size of all other Bitcoin ETF combined ($~36 billion across all).

While Bitcoiners are arguing about what to name small denominations of bitcoin to reduce the sticker shock price of owning a whole one, the average US investor is looking at $68 per $IBIT share as “cheap.”

-CBS

ICE raids bitcoin mine in Pyote, Texas

On Monday, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency and a host of other law enforcement offices converged on a bitcoin mine in Pyote, Texas, specifically targeting an on-site ASIC repair center run by ADW tech. ICE arrested 12-13 undocumented Chinese nationals in the raid, roughly half of the ASIC repair center’s staff. - link

OUR TAKE: Now, when President Trump said that he was going to be the most pro Bitcoin president ever, we didn’t take that to mean you could employ undocumented foreign labor to stitch together S19s on their last breath.

Still, chalk another one up for hard knocks at the intersection of domestic policy and bitcoin.

Miners were no stranger to this intersection under Biden. Chokepoint 2.0 threatened to financially maroon many companies and individuals in Bitcoin, and this overreach culminated in the importation freeze then seizure of ASIC miners at U.S. ports of entry last year.

Those seizures persisted into Trump’s term until they were dropped in Q1/Q2 of this year.

All of that said, these ICE raids are in a different category. The CBP held ASICs at the border without providing any clear mandate and offering miners no recourse.

The ICE raid, however, was committed against a company willingly violating U.S. immigration and labor laws. FAFO, that kind of thing.

A few points of inside baseball to close this one out:

1) Rumors are chirping around that a rival bitcoin mining company tipped ICE off to the ADW Tech repair center. Bitcoin mining is cutthroat, so this would not surprise me, but we have no way of verifying.

2) Anyone who has worked in bitcoin mining, particularly on the ASIC trading side, will tell you horror stories — either 1st, 2nd, or 3rd hand — about the conditions in some of these ASIC repair facilities. I’m talking sweatshop conditions, 15+ hours a day, no A/C in-the-middle-of-a-Texas-July kind of bad.

From our perspective, its all the better that employers are held accountable. Now we wait to hear if more raids are on their way.

-CMH

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Canaan stock surges as US-miner orders 50,000 Avalons

Canaan (CAN) announced in a press release that it has secured a U.S. purchase order for more than 50,000 Avalon A15 Pro bitcoin mining machines, marking the company’s largest single order over the past three years. The units are slated for delivery in Q4 2025 - link

UK seeks to keep £5B bitcoin haul from Chinese fraud case

British prosecutors are moving to retain nearly 61,000 BTC (worth about £5 billion) seized in connection with a Chinese money-laundering scheme. The case centers on the so-called “Bitcoin Queen,” convicted of running one of the country’s largest fraud networks. - link

Strategy raises STRC dividend rate to 10.25%

Strategy has bumped the annualized dividend for its STRC preferred stock to 10.25% (formerly 10%), effective October 1. - link

Tether adds 8,888 BTC to treasury, now holds ~86,335 BTC

Stablecoin issuer Tether transferred 8,888.889 BTC on September 30 to its main on-chain treasury address, bringing the balance to 86,335.46 BTC, per Arkham on-chain analysis. The addition cements Tether with the 2nd largest known private BTC Treasury.  - link