Newsletter

• US spot Bitcoin ETF has seen a net outflow for five consecutive trading days, totaling $1.44 billion, as investors withdraw from risky assets following market turmoil.
• The net assets of these funds have dropped to $93.7 billion, a decrease of about 45% from the peak of $169.5 billion on October 2025.
• Analysts say that the amount of capital flowing out is not large relative to the $55 billion that the fund has accumulated, but they warn that the demand from buyers has dried up.

As investors withdrew from risky assets following severe market fluctuations, the US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded open-end index fund ( ETF ) has seen net outflows for five consecutive trading days.

According to SoSoValue data, these funds saw a total outflow of approximately $1.44 billion from November 5th to November 11th, with a single-day outflow of $299.9 million on Wednesday. As of now, the net outflow for November has reached $1.88 billion, while in October, there was an outflow of $520 million from these funds.

This outflow occurred simultaneously with the selling of artificial intelligence and technology stocks. On November 5th, the NASDAQ Composite Index fell by 5.5% in a single day, and Bitcoin ETF saw a net outflow of approximately $430 million on that day.

HashKey Senior Researcher Tim Sun said to Decrypt: "The result of this outflow is that institutional investors are actively or passively reducing their risk exposure after the decline in macro risk appetite, but this is not yet sufficient to prove that the long-term allocation logic for Bitcoin has reversed."

Sun said that the outflows over these five days account for about 2.6% of the cumulative net inflows of $55.1 billion into these funds, "which is far from a full retreat." However, due to the combined effects of capital outflows and price declines, the total net assets of these funds have dropped to $93.7 billion, a decrease of about 45% from the peak of $169.5 billion in October 2025.

According to Decrypt data, Bitcoin is trading at $73,358, down 0.87% in the past 24 hours. On Decrypt Predict, users believe that the probability of Bitcoin breaking through $74,000 on Sunday afternoon is 40%, and the probability of holding above $70,000 is 94%. Sun estimates that the average holding cost of spot Bitcoin ETF is around $81,000, which means that some ETF holders are currently facing unrealized losses; as investors re-evaluate their asset allocation at the end of the year, some may further reduce their exposure.

Lack of buyers

Analysts expressed greater concern over the lack of new buyers. BitGo, the head of research at Greg Cipolaro, stated in a note sent to Decrypt that the post-election rebound only brought in $75 million in capital for spot Bitcoin ETF, while the supply of dollar-pegged stablecoins decreased by 1.9% to $286.3 billion. "This indicates that there is almost no new capital waiting to enter the market off-exchange," he said. Decrypt reported on Wednesday that chain analysis firm Glassnode found that within 30 days as of November 9th, the total supply of stablecoins had decreased by $14.2 billion, marking the fastest contraction since June 2022.

Cipolaro says that arbitrage trading, which involves buying spot ETF shares and simultaneously shorting futures to capture the basis, has become less attractive because the basis is now lower than the borrowing cost, prompting many funds to withdraw. Sun indicates that this means that ETF capital flows may now reflect the directional demand for Bitcoin more directly than before.

Corporate buyers are also slowing down. Sun states that the premium of Strategy's stock price relative to the value of its Bitcoin holdings has narrowed, which reduces the attractiveness for companies to continue buying Bitcoin through financing. Moreover, MSCI has decided to exclude it from the index, which may also cut off passive investment funds.

He said, "The most critical issue at present is the ongoing lack of buying demand itself, which may have a greater impact on prices than just the sheer volume of sales."

Cipolaro indicates that Bitcoin has fallen along with risk assets, but it has lagged behind them during the rebound. "Unless it begins to participate in the upward trend and ETF demand increases, digital assets may continue to face further downward pressure without benefiting from the rebound of broader risk assets," he wrote.

Not everyone sees these outflows as a long-term warning sign. Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas compared Bitcoin ETF to gold ETF GLD, noting that after Bitcoin peaked in 2011, about 40% of investors left the market, and it took nearly a decade to recover its asset size again. However, today Bitcoin’s asset size is nearly three times that peak level. “Assets without cash flow rely entirely on sentiment, and sentiment can change,” he wrote.