What if, in the month of January, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approves the multiple applications for a spot bitcoin ETF? In addition to the favorable forecasts on the price of bitcoin, this news would translate into almost 4% of the total supply of BTC being held by ETF issuers.

This is presumed by the analysis firm Coingecko, who calculate that if Grayscale's application for an ETF is approved, a total of 793,034 BTC would be linked to these financial tools. The number could be even higher, considering that there are 13 applications for a spot bitcoin ETF, led by big-name companies such as BlackRock.

The approval of these ETFs would represent a before and after for the market. Currently, the amount of bitcoins managed by issuers is only 0.8%. Only Grayscale Fund Trust, which is the company with the most bitcoins held, has 3 times more BTC than all ETFs outstanding for 2023.

Even though the difference is abysmal, it's not that ETF issuers manage few assets at present. According to Coingecko's calculations, these funds should have $16 billion under management. In this way, they are positioned as the fourth set of entities with the highest amount of bitcoins held, after Microstrategy, Block.one and Grayscale.

Although the Grayscale Fund Trust has all the makings of becoming a bitcoin ETF giant, we are not yet certain that the SEC will approve its application. Therefore, at the moment, the ETF with the largest number of assets under its protection is the XBT Provider Bitcoin Tracker One (CoinXBT).

It is a legend in the Bitcoin market, as it was the first spot ETF in history when it was issued in 2015 in Sweden. Today, the fund has $7 billion under its management.

In terms of the number of assets held, it is followed by the Proshares Futures ETF (BITO) that was recently issued in the United States and already holds almost $2 billion. In third place is a Canadian ETF, the Purpose Bitcoin ETF (BTCC) which manages $1.5 billion.