It's not SpaceX. Bitcoin ETF outflows may be an arbitrage story

Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have suffered nearly $5.75 billion of outflows since mid-May, fueling speculation that institutional investors are cashing out of crypto to prepare for the highly anticipated SpaceX IPO.

The selling pressure drove bitcoin to a 2026 low below $60,000 in the first week of June, more than 50% below its all-time high of nearly $125,000 last October. One of the prevailing narratives for the sell-off is a rotation of capital away from cryptocurrency to prepare for a slate of highly anticipated initial public offerings (IPOs) starting with SpaceX (SPCX) on Friday.

Fabian Dori, chief investment officer at Swiss digital asset bank Sygnum, isn’t convinced.

“The ETF outflows are real,” Dori said in an interview with CoinDesk. “But the data does not truly support the hypothesis that bitcoin would be bleeding because of the SpaceX IPO.”

If investors were systematically selling bitcoin to raise cash for IPO allocations, exchange balances would likely show unusual patterns of outflows and stablecoin market capitalization would probably decline as capital exited the crypto ecosystem, he argues. Neither appears to be happening.

Exchange flows remain broadly normal, while stablecoin supply has seen little meaningful contraction. More speculative corners of the digital asset market also continue attracting capital. Products linked to higher-risk crypto assets are still gathering inflows, something Dori says would be unlikely if investors were abandoning the asset class altogether.

Perhaps the strongest argument against the IPO-rotation theory comes from derivatives markets.

Dori pointed to a decline in CME bitcoin futures open interest that has coincided with ETF redemptions. That relationship suggests a significant portion of the outflows may be linked to the unwinding of cash-and-carry arbitrage trades rather than investors reallocating toward equity offerings.

A cash-and-carry trade is a popular institutional arbitrage strategy that seeks to profit from the gap between bitcoin’s spot price and futures prices. Investors buy spot bitcoin, often through an ETF, while also selling bitcoin futures contracts. As long as futures trade at a premium to spot prices, the investor can earn a relatively low-risk yield when the contracts converge at expiry.

When that premium narrows, or funding conditions become less attractive, traders unwind the position by selling their spot exposure and closing their futures shorts. That process can generate ETF outflows even when investors are not turning bearish on bitcoin itself. Instead, the arbitrage opportunity has simply become less profitable.

“Open interest and funding rates moved very positively together over the same period,” Dori said. “That points towards a significant part of the ETF flows being associated with unwinding of funding-rate carry-trade arbitrage.”

Read More: It’s not just bitcoin ETFs. Corporate BTC buying has dried up too