Vanguard Group has drawn the ire of cryptocurrency enthusiasts for its decision to bar not just the new spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds but all crypto products from its platform, with many pushing a #BoycottVanguard campaign on X, formerly Twitter.
Several have announced they're taking their money to other investment firms like Fidelity, and one X account reported a new "revenge coin" against Vanguard with an expletive-based trading symbol ($FKVG).
Mutual fund and ETF giant Vanguard, however, isn't likely to suffer much damage from crypto-driven defections, according to Eric Balchunas, Bloomberg senior ETF analyst, who wrote a book on Vanguard and its founder called "The Bogle Effect."
With $7.2 trillion in registered U.S. fund assets under management — a 27% market share — Vanguard's presence in the fund space is unparallelled, as Balchunas showed in a chart posted to X Tuesday.
Here's a look at the historical market share of all registered US fund assets, Vanguard is in league of own with 27% share via $7.2T in aum, double anyone else and double the old historical high water mark last held Fidelity in the 90s. pic.twitter.com/3hqmzXjCH8
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) January 16, 2024
When another X user asked "How's the bleeding so far?," Balchunas responded:
"Haha. Vanguard ETFs have taken in $5b past 5 days. For context," $5 billion is Balchunas' optimistic prediction for flows into the "nine newborn" bitcoin ETFs in the first four to six months. "Vanguard is a machine and IMO the #BoycottVanguard (movement) is highly unlikely to even dent the inflows let alone cause bleeding."
The Securities and Exchange Commission last week approved the first 11 U.S. ETFs investing directly in bitcoin, with Fidelity, BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, ARK Investment Management, WisdomTree and Grayscale among the firms offering the ETFs.
