Bitcoin ETFs Shed Nearly $1 Billion in Two Weeks as Uptober Stays Red

The funds lost a net $228.6 million for the week, according to SoSoValue, following a $681.1 million drain the week before. Over the two weeks, about $910 million has left the funds.

It was a choppy stretch. A $175.7 million inflow on Tuesday was wiped out a day later by $261.4 million in redemptions, the week’s worst session. Thursday brought a modest $5.1 million inflow before selling resumed Friday.

Wednesday’s selling coincided with a hot inflation print. The consumer price index showed prices up 3.7% year over year in September, above the 3.6% forecast. A hotter-than-expected producer price reading followed Thursday, reviving bets on another Federal Reserve interest rate hike.

Bitcoin briefly slipped below $80,000 on Thursday, and nearly $950 million in leveraged crypto positions were liquidated over 24 hours, about 90% of them bullish longs, according to CoinGlass. The drop also pushed Bitcoin below the average ETF holder’s estimated cost basis near $82,300, Nexo analyst Iliya Kalchev told Decrypt.

When inflation runs hot, the Fed tends to keep raising rates, pushing up Treasury yields and making a nearly risk-free return of around 5% a tough competitor for riskier bets like Bitcoin. Higher rates also make borrowing costlier and lift the dollar, squeezing the cheap credit that leveraged crypto traders depend on.

The back-to-back red weeks have dragged October deep into negative territory. After opening the month with roughly $293 million in inflows, the funds are now down about $615 million for October, based on Decrypt’s tracker. The slide began in earnest on Oct. 7, when a $484.9 million exit marked the funds’ worst day since June. Ethereum and Solana ETFs have also been in the red this month.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs are exchange-traded funds that hold actual Bitcoin. They trade on stock exchanges like ordinary shares, giving investors exposure through a regular brokerage account without buying or storing the asset themselves.

Since launching in January 2024, they’ve drawn $57.3 billion in cumulative net inflows, according to Decrypt’s tracker, making them a fixture of Wall Street’s crypto exposure. Because issuers report flows daily, and institutions and financial advisers account for much of the money, the figures have become a closely watched gauge of investor sentiment.

Total net assets stand at $104.29 billion, according to SoSoValue, while Decrypt’s tracker puts the figure at $100.2 billion. Bitcoin closed Friday near $81,590, down from about $82,337 a week earlier.