Bitcoin ETFs see full week of net outflows, record low inflows for BlackRock, Fidelity

Wall Street's spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) set a new record this week, but unlike in the recent past, crypto traders may be less than enthusiastic about this latest milestone: five straight days of net outflows. 

Over the past week, the ten ETFs saw total outflows of $888 million, led by a day of record-breaking outflows from Grayscale's GBTC on Monday, March 18 according to data from BitMEX Research. The five-day streak of net outflows is the longest seen thus far, besting a four-day streak from January of this year. 

The strong outflows were matched by weak inflows. Blackrock's IBIT, which captures almost half the market, saw record-low inflows of $49.3 million on Wednesday, March 20, only for that record to be broken on Friday, when IBIT received only $18.9 million in new capital. Fidelity's FBTC, the third-largest spot bitcoin ETF, also saw record-low inflows this week, with merely $2.9 million on Thursday, March 21. 

While the strong outflows correspond with a pullback in bitcoin's price, other factors may explain the large outflows: Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas noted that Grayscale's unusually large outflows may be the result of digital financial firm Genesis's trading. 

And while inflows were net negative, trading volumes were still significant, if slightly lower than recent weeks. According to The Block's data dashboard, the cumulative volumes of the spot bitcoin ETFs increased about $22 billion over the past week to reach a total of $164 billion.