Don't the fees mean that they make money no matter which direction the flows go?
Well.. "money"... They make fiat but you know what I mean
Discussion
So the obvious thing I missed was now that it's been converted from a trust to an ETF the sale of GBTC results in sales of the underlying asset.
While fees could be a factor, I also didn't realize FTX's estate is (or was) holding 22 million units of GBTC. That is ~$800mm people are certainly eager to recover.
Their fees are a % of the ETF's assets under management each year, so they make money either way, but BTC price going up makes them more. E.g. $1bn assets, 0.2% p.a. fee = $2m p.a. . Suppose there's then noone buying or selling, but BTC price doubles, then assets would increase to $2bn and ETF issuer would get $4m p.a.