• Donald Trump is now accepting crypto donations for the first time. Yuge news, folks. The biggest.

• Coinbase COO said that following Congress’ vote to overturn SAB 121, there is “panic” in the Biden administration.

• Laura Shin interviewed Matt Hougan and Eric Balchunas about surprise reversal of Ethereum’s ETF chances, the “stunning success” of bitcoin ETFs, and more. Matt Hougan also wrote a piece on the eth ETF developments.

• Fidelity filed an amended S-yield 1 for its spot ethereum ETF, removing staking (the yield that accrues to eth holders) the from the application. Reminder: Staking was probably part of the SEC’s alleged ‘security’ designation of ethereum. Thus, removing it might be key to the ETF approval.

• Nancy Pelosi may support the pro-crypto FIT 21 Act, which is the subject of a vote in the House this week. Given that the former Speaker is provably one of the best investors in the world, chances are she’s backing the winning horse.

The ravenous Whales were insatiable again yesterday. The rest of the ecosystem got right out of the way.

Stocks came off the boil a bit on Tuesday, which is perhaps to be expected after Monday’s euphoria.

🇺🇸 United States

🥇BlackRock

IBIT had a monster day yesterday, with inflows of 4170 BTC ($291m). Nobody else was even close.

🥈 Fidelity

FBTC was the only other ETF to take inflows, bringing in 370 BTC ($25.8m).

🧮 Total

Total net inflows of 4408 BTC yesterday ($307m). Aside from those mentioned, BITB and HODL had small outflows ($4.2m and $5.9m respectively), and everyone else including GBTC was neutral on the day.

🇭🇰 Hong Kong

Hong Kong was flowless on Tuesday. Sans flow. Nada. Goose eggs.

Today’s Bagholder of the day is LPL Financial.

Of the 948 institutions who invested in bitcoin ETFs in Q1, 758 are Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs).

Of the RIAs, LPL has the 6th largest holding, with $60m between ARKB, GBTC, and IBIT.

They also have the second-largest AUM of any of the RIAs, at $463 billion.

LPL also has by far the most High Net Worth Individual (HNWI) clients, at 440k. With an estimated AUM for those HNWIs of $292b.

What’s interesting about all this is that LPL leadership was rather coy back in February, when Bloomberg reported that the firm was ‘avoiding the hype’ of the bitcoin ETFs.

LPL was apparently intending to wait and see over a three month period, with exec Rob Pettman saying “We just want to see how they work in the markets.”

Did something change? Pressure from the large, wealthy, bitcoin-hungry client base?

Or this could have indeed been just the trial period, and their $60m is but a drop in a very large bucket of capital, preparing to tip in.

That’s the state of bitcoin flows for this Wednesday.

I’ll see you back here tomorrow.

— Julian