Spot bitcoin ETFs capped their worst weekly run since launch Friday, when the category shed $444.51 million in a single day. The outflow marked the seventh consecutive week of net withdrawals, according to The Block's data—the longest negative streak the funds have recorded.
The damage to buy-and-hold portfolios is stark. Investors who poured money into the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) near the peak now sit down approximately 40 percent. Bitcoin itself trades around $61,499, well below the levels that drew retail capital into these funds after their January 2024 debut.
A week of heavy selling tends to signal two things at once: forced liquidations from leveraged positions and voluntary exits from holders convinced the price has no near-term bounce. Outflows of this scale, running seven weeks unbroken, suggest both dynamics are in play. The institutional ETF inflows that greeted the funds' launch—positioning them as a new mainstream avenue into bitcoin—have clearly reversed.
The prior worst week for the category came during the March 2024 selloff, when macro uncertainty and Fed rate-hold signals rattled risk appetite broadly. This week's performance now ranks second in drawdown severity, per The Block's tracking. The comparison matters because it underscores that the January enthusiasm has already faded under the weight of unchanged macro conditions: inflation remains sticky, rate cuts have stalled, and the Fed's path forward remains opaque.
Fund-specific flows tell a useful story. IBIT, the largest spot bitcoin ETF by assets, has seen the heaviest redemption pressure. Smaller competitors like Fidelity's FBTC and Grayscale's mini trust have bled assets more slowly, reflecting varied investor bases and fee structures. Yet all three are underwater for their respective holders.
What's changed since January is simple: the regulatory green light that arrived when the SEC approved the first spot bitcoin ETFs created a fresh path for retail capital into bitcoin at precisely the moment sentiment was rolling over. Early adopters got burned. The funds themselves remain operational and custodially sound—the risk here is a holder's entry price, not the fund structure.