Glossary

Assets under management (AUM)

Assets under management (AUM) is the total market value of the assets that a fund holds on behalf of its investors.

Assets under management (AUM) is the total market value of everything a fund holds for its investors. For an exchange-traded fund, the sponsor finds the figure by multiplying the amount of the underlying asset by its current price. Any cash in the fund is added to the total.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs usually report AUM in US dollars. Many of them also report the number of bitcoin they hold. These two figures answer different questions. The coin count shows how much bitcoin the fund controls. The dollar value shows the size of the fund at the current price.

AUM changes for two separate reasons. A price move changes the value of the existing holdings. A net inflow or outflow changes the number of coins in the fund. A rising AUM figure therefore does not prove that new money entered the fund. Compare AUM with flow data to separate the price effect from the flow effect.