Grayscale exec says Bitcoin ETF inflows could reach $15B in 2026

Spot Bitcoin ETFs are barely two years old. In that time, they have pulled in more cumulative capital than any ETF launch class in history, crossed $100 billion in total assets under management, and turned BlackRock's IBIT into the firm's single largest revenue source.

Krista Lynch, Senior Vice President of ETF capital markets at Grayscale, recently joined TheStreet Roundtable and said a new in-kind feature plus demand from crypto-native investors could push 2026 inflows to roughly $15 billion this year.

"It's a really exciting time with all these tailwinds, and I think it is totally within the realm of possibility to have about $15 billion in inflows this year to Bitcoin ETFs alone,” she said.

To put that number in context, 2026 has been rocky so far. Net inflows across all spot Bitcoin ETFs came in at roughly $1.5 billion for the entire first quarter, weighed down by a six-day outflow streak in May that pulled $1.55 billion out of the products in a single week. But April reversed the trend sharply, bringing in $2.44 billion, the strongest month of the year. So Lynch's $15 billion target is not a straight line from where things stand. It assumes the second half picks up considerably.

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Spot Bitcoin ETFs have had a historic two years

Spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in the United States in January 2024 after the SEC finally approved them, ending more than a decade of rejected filings. The category was an immediate hit. Roughly 75% of IBIT's first million investors were brand new to BlackRock, meaning these were not existing clients rotating into a new product. These were people who had never used BlackRock before and showed up specifically for Bitcoin exposure.

IBIT hit $70 billion in AUM in just 341 trading days. That is five times faster than SPDR Gold (GLD) and the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) needed to reach the same level. For reference, GLD launched in 2004 and VOO launched in 2010. Both are considered among the most successful ETF launches ever, and IBIT lapped them.

Year two kept the pace going. 2025 brought another $47.2 billion in inflows, only 3% below the launch year. Most ETFs see a steep drop in inflows after year one. Bitcoin ETFs did not.

The category now sits at roughly $102 billion in total AUM across all issuers, with U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs holding approximately 6.77% of the total Bitcoin supply. That means less than a dozen funds collectively hold more Bitcoin than any single entity in the world besides Satoshi Nakamoto's untouched wallet. IBIT leads the pack at roughly $62 billion in AUM as of late May 2026.

Looking forward: $15B in 2026 inflows

Lynch points to roughly $3 billion in recent quarterly inflows as her base rate for the projection.

"If you look at the Bitcoin products broadly, they have had about $3 billion in inflows this quarter. You could really straight line annualize that and say that they could have about 12 billion dollars of inflows total,” she said.

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Bitwise projects U.S.-listed Bitcoin ETFs could purchase more than 100% of all new Bitcoin issuance in 2026, a demand-supply setup with no precedent in Bitcoin's 17-year history.

Using ETFs as a bridge to TradFi

The big shift for Bitcoin ETFs in 2026 is in-kind creations and redemptions, which the SEC approved for crypto ETFs in July 2025. Instead of selling Bitcoin for cash and then buying ETF shares, holders can deposit their actual Bitcoin into the fund and receive shares in return, avoiding a taxable sale.

"There's a particular type of investor, generally someone more crypto native, who has tokens that they want to be able to access the U.S. financial system with. What I mean by that is put it in an account that's eligible for estate planning, for margin, for collateral,” Lynch explained.

The extra $3 billion on top of that annualized $12 billion, she argues, comes from the new in-kind creation mechanism and the crypto-native investors it brings in. More on that below.

Bitwise, a competing crypto asset manager, projects that U.S.-listed Bitcoin ETFs could purchase more than 100% of all new Bitcoin issuance in 2026. Bitcoin miners produce roughly 450 new BTC per day after last year's halving. If ETF inflows exceed that rate on an annualized basis, ETFs would be absorbing more Bitcoin than the network creates. That kind of demand-supply imbalance has no precedent in Bitcoin's 17-year history.

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The in-kind shift and why it matters

The big structural change for Bitcoin ETFs in 2026 is in-kind creations and redemptions. Here is what that means in plain English.

When Bitcoin ETFs launched in January 2024, the SEC required them to use a cash-only model. If you wanted to put Bitcoin into an ETF, you had to sell your Bitcoin for cash first, then use that cash to buy ETF shares. That sale triggered a taxable event. If you had been holding Bitcoin since 2017 and it went from $4,000 to $80,000, you owed capital gains tax on the entire gain the moment you sold, even though you were just trying to move it into an ETF wrapper.

On July 29, 2025, the SEC approved in-kind creations and redemptions for all spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs. That means holders can now deposit their actual Bitcoin directly into the fund and receive ETF shares in return, without selling. No taxable event. No cash conversion. The Bitcoin goes straight into the fund.

Lynch says this opens the door for a specific type of investor who was previously locked out of the ETF structure.

"There's a particular type of investor, generally someone more crypto native, who has tokens that they want to be able to access the U.S. financial system with. What I mean by that is put it in an account that's eligible for estate planning, for margin, for collateral."

Krista Lynch, SVP of ETF Capital Markets, Grayscale

Think about someone who bought 50 Bitcoin in 2015 at $300 each. That position is now worth roughly $4 million. They want to use that Bitcoin as collateral for a loan, pass it to their kids through a trust, or hold it in a brokerage account where they can margin against it. Before in-kind, they would have had to sell the Bitcoin, pay taxes on a massive gain, and then buy ETF shares with whatever was left. Now they just deposit the Bitcoin directly and get shares. The tax bill gets deferred until they eventually sell the ETF shares.

This is not about getting retail investors into Bitcoin. It is about getting long-time Bitcoin holders into the traditional financial system without forcing them to liquidate first.

Grayscale's position

Grayscale is in an unusual spot. Its flagship product, GBTC, was the original Bitcoin fund. It launched as a trust in 2013 and converted to an ETF in January 2024 when the SEC gave its approval. But GBTC charges 1.5% in annual fees, the highest of any U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF. BlackRock's IBIT charges 0.25%. Fidelity's FBTC charges 0.25%. Most of the competition is in the 0.15% to 0.25% range.

Because of that fee gap, GBTC has seen roughly $25.9 billion in cumulative net outflows since converting. A huge chunk of that was investors rotating out of GBTC and into cheaper alternatives like IBIT and FBTC. The fund still has just over $11 billion in AUM, but it has lost more than two-thirds of its assets.

Lynch argues that the remaining holders are sticky and are not going anywhere.

"GBTC specifically has a very sticky investor base. I think our BTC product would probably get a larger percentage of that."

The "BTC product" she is referring to is the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust, a lower-fee alternative Grayscale launched to compete with IBIT and FBTC. The strategy is straightforward: let GBTC keep its legacy holders who are not leaving (many of whom may face large capital gains if they sell), and use the Mini Trust to attract the next wave of new investors at a competitive fee.

Whether $15 billion actually flows into Bitcoin ETFs this year depends on a few things that are out of Grayscale's control: where Treasury yields go, whether the Iran conflict escalates further, and whether Bitcoin can reclaim the $82,000 level it has been stuck below for weeks. But the structural plumbing, the in-kind mechanism and the brokerage infrastructure, is now in place for the first time. The on-ramp exists. The question is how many people use it.