Data & Insights: BTC ETF Historic Redemptions; Strategy's Stretching Treasury

Can't Stop Flowing

• This is a section from The Block's The Funding newsletter, where also cover venture fundings developments and topics across the broader institutional crypto space — including Wall Street, public companies, institutional products and corporate adoption.
• Spot bitcoin ETFs notched a seventh straight week of net outflows, extending the longest weekly redemption stretch since the products launched in January 2024.
  • BTC traded as low as $58,189 intraday this week, its weakest print since September 2024, as a $692 million single-day outflow on June 25 marked the largest daily redemption since May and added pressure to a thin liquidity window.
• IBIT has continued to account for the bulk of both sides of the flow data, underscoring how concentrated the ETF complex has become. Smaller issuers like FBTC and GBTC have bled more consistently on a percentage basis, even as BlackRock's fund occasionally posts standalone green days.
• Despite the redemption pressure, cumulative trading volume across spot bitcoin ETFs has crossed $2 trillion since launch, a reminder that two-way trading activity and net asset retention are distinct signals. The wrapper remains liquid and actively used even as net demand turns negative.

Stretched Thin

• Strategy's STRC preferred stock, nicknamed "Stretch" for its design to hold near its $100 par value, has drifted into the mid-$70s, exposing strain in the capital structure underpinning Michael Saylor's bitcoin accumulation model.
  • STRC's dividend cash coverage has compressed sharply, from a previously cited multi-year runway to under a year, as annualized obligations climb toward $1.2 billion against a shrinking reserve. With the stock trading roughly 25% below par, the market is pricing in a dividend hike from the current 11.50% to somewhere north of 12% at the next reset, the mechanism by which Strategy has historically tried to pull STRC back toward its target price.
• More structurally significant is mNAV's slide to effectively 1.0x. Strategy's entire equity flywheel depends on issuing MSTR shares at a premium to its bitcoin holdings and redeploying the proceeds into more BTC. At parity, that issuance is dilutive rather than accretive, and the company has effectively paused its at-the-market program as a result.
• With the ATM idle and preferred dividends still due regardless of mNAV, Strategy's flexibility now hinges on whether cash reserves and incremental capital markets access can bridge the gap before bitcoin recovers, or whether further compression forces a choice between raising STRC's yield further, tapping less favorable financing, or pausing accumulation entirely.
  • It's important to note that there are no margin-call provisions on Strategy's convertible debt; the cash pressure mainly comes from the dividend attached to its preferred stocks. 

ETH Idles Onchain

• Ethereum's onchain transaction volume slid to a 12-month low of $83.9 billion in June, capping a steady descent from August's $347 billion peak and underscoring how far speculative throughput has unwound since the network's mid-2025 high-water mark.
  • The drop-off has been unrelenting, with volume having fallen in nine of the past ten months, with the pace of decline accelerating since February as monthly figures compressed.
• The metric measures gross USD value moved onchain, not unique economic activity, so the contraction reflects a sharp reduction in transaction count and size rather than a price effect alone. NFT and memecoin-driven settlement, which contributed to 2024-2025 volume, has largely evaporated.
  • The decline lines up with Bitcoin's broader risk-off slide, with BTC trading as low as the high-$59,000s this week, its weakest level since October 2024, as ETF outflows and macro pressure compound.
  • The same can be said for ETH price action, with the percentage of supply in profit also dropping to multi-year lows at 37%.
• Ethereum has spent the past two years positioning itself as the preferred settlement layer for institutional and tokenized-asset flows, yet onchain throughput hasn't tracked that narrative. RWA and stablecoin settlement volumes have been comparatively resilient even as discretionary/speculative flow collapsed, suggesting the composition of activity has shifted even as the headline figure shrinks.

Real Winning Assets

• Hyperliquid's monthly perpetual volume stands at 16.8% of Binance's, per the time of writing in June 2026
  • The figure is actually less of a result from Hyperliquid's absolute growth, as its volume for the month currently stands at $247 billion, which is well below its record $400 billion from August 2025
  • It’s more so what's happening in the denominator, as Binance's monthly perp volume has fallen from $2.91 trillion in October 2025 to $1.46 trillion in June, a 50% decline over eight months.
  • This implies that the marginal speculator no longer defaults to a centralized venue, as Hyperliquid's order book depth and on-chain settlement have eradicated the historical liquidity moat that once protected Binance's perp dominance.
  • The ratio's near-doubling from under 10% in March 2025 to nearly 17% in June 2026 reflects a sustained migration
• In an attempt to defend its leading position, Binance has been heavily pushing RWA perps, which span commodities, equities and indexes.
  • Binance launched its first tokenized perps in March 2025 and has since scaled to a category-leading ~$142 billion of monthly volume in June 2026.
  • In comparison, Hyperliquid's HIP-3 stack has recorded $78.8 billion so far in June.
  • The composition data is more telling than the absolute share, as tokenized assets account for nearly 1/3rd of Hyperliquid's June perp volume, but less than 10% of Binance's.
  • This implies Binance has been building this product line to recapture share but also treating it as a defensive feature, while Hyperliquid has positioned tokenized assets as a structural growth pillar.
• On the overall perp ratio, a sustained reading above 15% for Hyperliquid against Binance would mark the first time a non-custodial venue has materially constrained Binance's dominance at this scale.

All Eyes on the Monthly Close

• Bitcoin fell to ~$58,000 on June 25, its lowest level in over 21 months and the first sub-$60,000 close since September 2024.
  • As of the time of writing, BTC is down ~52% from its all-time high set in October 2025.
  • The trigger behind the recent downturn in the price of BTC is the stress in Strategy's STRC preferred stock and the related pause in MSTR's at-the-market program, which we’ve covered above.
  • The price action itself is what makes this episode distinct from prior drawdowns, as BTC has lost nearly 20% of its value in the last 30 days alone, a steeper monthly decline than anything recorded in the prior 18 months.
  • The magnitude and speed together point to a discrete shift in the marginal buyer base rather than a continuation of the trend.
• Second-order effects ripple through the bitcoin treasury company cohort.
  • The post-2024 wave of public companies that raised capital against MSTR's premium-issuance template now face the same mNAV math at worse terms.
  • In short, for these companies, the reflexivity that drove the cycle higher, which was corporate issuance pushing spot up, which lifted equity premiums, which funded more issuance, now runs in reverse.
• Third-order effects of the Bitcoin downturn appear in ETF flows and derivatives positioning.
  • Q2 closes at Tuesday's session, leaving only two trading days for the print that will stamp every fund's Q2 holdings report
  • The >50% drawdown from October 2025 has likely dragged a large share of 2024-2025 ETF cost basis into unrealized loss territory and bitcoin is on track to close Q2 down over 30% YTD.
  • The Q2 print will almost certainly book a steep loss for spot ETF holders.
  • There is a possibility that funds that have to publish that mark have a direct incentive to window-dress before Tuesday's close, by trimming losers to clean up holdings reporting, which might further compound selling pressure rather than relieve it.