US Spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs Extend Weekly Net Outflows to $390M

Bitcoin News

The run of withdrawals from US spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds has not stopped. Daily disclosure data, published by the issuers after each session, shows that the 12-fund complex recorded a third consecutive day of net redemptions on Aug 14, with $57.6 million leaving the products. The amount is modest in dollar terms, but the direction is what changed. That daily figure left the trading week of Aug 10-14 with approximately $390 million in net outflows, a sharp reversal from the prior week, when the funds took in $853 million, their strongest weekly inflow since April. The streak began two sessions earlier, which is why the weekly total is larger than the final session alone. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) drove the latest day’s selling as well, accounting for $55.5 million, or about 96%, of total redemptions; Fidelity’s FBTC saw $6.8 million exit, while Bitwise’s BITB registered $6.1 million of inflows. The prior week’s inflow had been led by IBIT, which absorbed $693 million, roughly 81% of that total. The concentration in IBIT is consistent with the pattern in the first half: the largest fund has absorbed most of both the inflows and the outflows. The persistence of the outflow streak has rekindled concerns about whether the institutional demand recovery visible only a week earlier was durable. The Aug 14 print, in other words, is the latest instance of a direction that has now repeated for three sessions.

The weekly outflow extends a pattern already visible in IBIT’s own half-year numbers, and the 2026 flow picture has turned negative for the first time since the products launched. The fund bought $2.68 billion of Bitcoin during the first half of 2026 and sold $8.42 billion, producing net selling of about $5.74 billion. In the same period a year earlier, it had bought $19.13 billion and sold $4.16 billion, leaving net buying of roughly $14.97 billion. That amounts to a swing of about $20.7 billion in IBIT’s positioning within a year. The turnover also shows up in the fund’s P&L: roughly $1.78 billion in realized losses and $20.3 billion in unrealized losses for the half. Across the broader product set, total assets under management stood at $76.6 billion, about 25% below the all-time high of $104 billion. Cumulative net inflows since the US spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in January 2024 still total $51.8 billion, but 2026 has so far seen approximately $4.5 billion leave, marking the first calendar year of net outflows. Put differently, the 2026 outflow has so far unwound only a fraction of the capital accumulated since launch. The flow data has become the market’s most direct read on institutional demand for Bitcoin exposure, and the recent weekly numbers point in the opposite direction from the $853 million inflow that preceded them. The outflows do not, however, prove a broad institutional retreat or a slide into a bear market. Morgan Stanley raised its IBIT holdings by 23% to 16.5 million shares; UBS held about $90 million and Tudor Investment $22.9 million. A US state pension fund kept 197,844 shares despite an unrealized loss of about 34%. That decision to hold through the loss is one sign that the outflow cycle is not yet a broad-based exit. Net-outflow days have made up 54% of trading days in 2026, well above the 31% pace of 2024, leaving long-term accumulation and short-term redemptions in a standoff. Market participants say a durable reversal would need IBIT to return to buying and the product group to string together four straight weeks of net inflows.

ETF flow data is one input; price structure has held its ground. Spot Bitcoin trades at $64,302.89, up 2.4% in 24 hours, and support at $63,863.70 is intact. COINOTAG’s proprietary 42-indicator composite S/R scoring engine rates that level 74/100, drawing on Fibo 0.236 and Ichimoku Senkou A confluence. Resistance at $65,720.50 scores 64/100 via EMA 100 and Ichimoku Senkou B. Derivatives data shows funding at 0.0023%, open interest at $13.60 billion and a long/short ratio of 1.57 (61.2% long). The Fear & Greed Index at 31 keeps sentiment cautious. A break below $63,863.70 would invalidate the range-bound setup; a close above $65,720.50 would turn attention to $69,178. The outflows have not disturbed the sideways structure.