BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has dropped its minimum in-kind transfer threshold from $25 million to $1 million. That’s a 96% reduction in the barrier to entry for authorized participants who want to create or redeem ETF shares using actual Bitcoin rather than cash equivalents.
What in-kind transfers actually mean
For most of IBIT’s existence, those deliveries had to happen in cash. An AP wanting to create shares would wire dollars, and BlackRock’s team would go buy Bitcoin on the open market. The reverse happened on redemptions.
The SEC changed the game in mid-2025 when it approved in-kind transactions for spot Bitcoin ETFs. That meant APs could finally deliver actual Bitcoin to create shares, or receive actual Bitcoin when redeeming them.
BlackRock had filed for this capability back in January 2025. Once approved, the initial minimum for these in-kind transfers was set at $25 million, a figure tied to early NAV assumptions in the fund’s original filings. Now that number sits at $1 million.
