Bitcoin ETF Inflows Crack as BTC-USD Sinks Toward $73,000

Bitcoin ETF Inflows – BTC-USD Flows Turn Choppy As AUM Drops Under $100 Billion

BTC-USD Slides Below Strategy’s Average Cost As Liquidations Hit Billions

BTC-USD is trading in the low- to mid-$70,000s after a dip toward $73,000, and that level cuts straight through the average cost basis of some of the biggest public balance-sheet buyers.
Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy, NASDAQ:MSTR) disclosed a new purchase of 855 BTC for $75.3 million at an average of $87,974 per coin, financed via an at-the-market equity program that raised $106.1 million from selling 673,527 shares. The firm now holds 713,502 BTC acquired for $54.26 billion at an average of $76,052 per coin. At current spot levels near $73,000, that Bitcoin hoard is sitting below cost and the equity is reacting accordingly, with the stock down roughly 8% toward $122 after tagging intraday lows near $121.
The derivatives side confirms stress. Around $2.56 billion of BTC-USD futures positions have been flushed out as Bitcoin slid from the high-$70,000s into the low-$70,000s, with long liquidations dominating. That tells you a large portion of the flow that chased the ETF trade and proxy stocks did so with leverage and is now being forced to de-risk into weakness. The ETF complex is taking that shock directly through redemptions.

Spot Bitcoin ETF Flows Flip From $561.8M In To $272.02M Out In 24 Hours

After a powerful $561.8–$561.9 million net inflow into U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs on February 2 that briefly ended a four-session losing streak, the next day saw that optimism reversed with $272.02 million in net outflows on February 3. One aggressive buy day followed immediately by a sizable sell day is exactly what you see when fast money is trading the range while real long-term allocation pauses.
The late-January picture was already negative. From January 27 through January 30, spot Bitcoin ETFs shed about $1.49 billion, compounding another $1.33 billion of outflows in the prior week into January 23. The February 2 spike simply offset part of that damage, rather than establishing a new accumulation phase.
On a weekly basis, the numbers still mask the stress. For the week ending February 3, spot Bitcoin ETFs posted roughly $289.87 million in net inflows only because the single $561.8M inflow day more than offset the $272.02M outflow. Turnover is still intense: around $16.26 billion traded across the complex for the week and $8.59 billion on February 3 alone, so these vehicles remain the main regulated pipe for large BTC tickets even while net flow leans negative.

IBIT ETF Emerges As The Core Anchor While Rivals Bleed Capital

Inside that flow storm, IBIT ETF (iShares Bitcoin Trust, NASDAQ:IBIT) has clearly become the anchor product. On February 3 – the same day the sector printed $272.02 million in net outflows – IBIT alone attracted $60.03 million of inflows.
The rest of the field looked very different. Fidelity’s FBTC led the withdrawals with $148.70 million in redemptions, wiping out almost all of the $153.35 million that came in a day earlier. Ark & 21Shares’ ARKB lost $62.50 million, while Grayscale’s legacy GBTC saw $56.63 million exit and its Bitcoin Mini Trust another $33.80 million. Bitwise’s BITB dropped $23.42 million, VanEck’s HODL shed $4.81 million, and Franklin’s EZBC saw $2.19 million pulled. Several smaller products, including BTCO, BRRR, BTCW and DEFI, were effectively flat on flows.
Price reflects the same pressure but also IBIT’s role as the preferred core holding. IBIT ETF trades around $41.73, down 3.64% on the day, with a one-year range of $40.80–$71.82 and a market cap near $167 billion. Even at the bottom of that range, IBIT continues to gather assets while peers lose them. For institutions that want liquid, headline Bitcoin exposure via ETFs, IBIT is increasingly the benchmark they choose to hold, trade around, or use to replace older, more expensive structures like GBTC.

Bitcoin ETF AUM Drops $31B From Peak As Average Entry Sits Above Spot

On the asset side, the drawdown is clear. Total net assets for spot Bitcoin ETFs peaked around $128.04 billion on January 14 and have since fallen to roughly $97.01 billion as of February 3, even after briefly reclaiming the $100.38 billion level on February 2. That is a decline of about $31.03 billion in less than three weeks.
Cumulative total net inflows, however, remain very large. After topping out near $57.82 billion on January 16, the complex now sits at about $55.30 billion, reflecting around $2.52 billion of net outflows tied to the late-January and early-February selling. Most of the capital that entered during the 2025–2026 ETF wave is still invested; it is simply no longer chasing higher prices with the same aggression.
Citi’s estimate of an average U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF entry price near $81,600 is crucial. With BTC-USD trading in the low- to mid-$70,000s, the typical ETF holder is now running an unrealized loss. That changes behavior. Rallies back toward $80,000–$82,000 become opportunities to trim, not necessarily add, especially for allocators who came in late. As long as spot sits below that blended cost, short-term flow risk stays skewed toward further profit-taking and de-risking.

Rotation, Not Flight: ETH, XRP And SOL ETFs Absorb Part Of The Bitcoin Outflow

While Bitcoin products bled, flows into alternative asset ETFs showed that risk appetite has not disappeared – it has shifted.
Ethereum spot ETFs recorded around $14.06 million in net inflows on February 3. BlackRock’s ETHA contributed roughly $42.85 million alone, backed by $19.12 million into Grayscale’s Ether Mini Trust and $8.25 million into ETHE. Invesco’s QETH added approximately $1.14 million. Offsetting that, Fidelity’s FETH saw $54.84 million in redemptions and VanEck’s ETHV about $2.47 million out. Even so, net flow stayed positive and total Ethereum ETF AUM sat near $13.39 billion with $2.77 billion traded in the session.
XRP ETFs had one of the strongest days, pulling in roughly $19.46 million. Franklin’s XRPZ led with about $12.13 million, Bitwise’s XRP product added $4.82 million, and Grayscale’s GXRP brought in $2.51 million, on turnover around $49.17 million and net assets near $1.11 billion.
Solana ETFs remained smaller but still attracted capital. Combined Solana spot ETFs captured around $1.24 million in net inflows. Fidelity’s FSOL added $1.19 million, Franklin’s SOEZ about $856,000, and Invesco’s QSOL around $354,000, partially offset by outflows of roughly $653,000 from VanEck’s VSOL and $503,000 from 21Shares’ TSOL. Total Solana ETF AUM stands near $854.30 million, with daily turnover close to $58.02 million.
Put together, Ethereum, XRP and Solana ETFs absorbed roughly $35.30 million of inflows on the same day that Bitcoin ETFs lost $272.02 million. The sector is not experiencing universal capitulation; the market is rotating away from concentrated BTC-USD exposure and into a more diversified altcoin mix.

BTC-USD Still Trades Like High-Beta Liquidity, Not “Digital Gold”

Citi’s read on BTC-USD in the current macro regime is blunt. Crypto continues to behave like a high-beta liquidity asset, not like “digital gold.” While physical gold has pushed higher on geopolitical tension and macro uncertainty, Bitcoin has come under pressure despite the same backdrop. The driver remains liquidity and risk appetite, not safe-haven demand.
Key headwinds are straightforward. Long liquidations in futures keep punching holes in the market whenever spot rolls over. The asset is still tightly correlated with equity and high-beta risk sentiment, which means equity drawdowns and geopolitical shocks drag BTC-USD lower instead of triggering a defensive bid. Regulatory progress on a U.S. digital-asset market-structure bill has been slow, with mixed political support and slipping odds of near-term passage, which delays the next demand leg from fully regulated mandates.
On top of that, a shrinking Federal Reserve balance sheet and tighter bank liquidity leave less room for purely speculative allocations. When reserves contract, marginal dollars are pulled away from crypto, and that shows up directly in weaker ETF inflows and more sensitivity to macro headlines.

Cross-Market Contagion And Burry’s “Death Spiral” Warning Around BTC

The cross-asset risk discussion has returned as well. Michael Burry argues that Bitcoin’s slide risks triggering a real “death spiral” across tokenized precious-metal markets. His estimate is that up to $1 billion in gold and silver exposures linked to crypto strategies were unwound into the late-January selloff, as algorithms dumped metals whenever crypto volatility or margin pressures spiked.
He links that behavior to structured trades where Bitcoin, tokenized metal futures and other synthetic products are bundled into a single risk engine. When BTC-USD breaks through key levels and margin models kick in, that algorithm does not discriminate – it cuts exposure across the entire basket, including gold and silver derivatives that are not backed by physical metal.
The point from a Bitcoin ETF perspective is simple: flows into and out of BTC-USD are now large enough, and sufficiently integrated with other tokenized exposures, that sharp Bitcoin drawdowns can spill across asset classes via funding, collateral and algorithmic strategies. That adds another layer of volatility to a product set already managing $97.01 billion of AUM and more than $55 billion of net inflows.
At the same time, Burry’s own track record in recent years has been mixed. He has been early or outright wrong on several major macro calls and equity shorts while markets rallied. His warning should be treated as a credible risk scenario, not as a base case already in motion.

BlackRock, IBIT And How Large Issuers Are Rebalancing Risk

The issuer-level behavior is just as important as the ETF tape. BlackRock sits at the center of this structure: it runs IBIT ETF, pulls in $60.03 million on a sector outflow day, and simultaneously leads Ethereum ETF inflows via ETHA with $42.85 million. At the same time, the firm is fine-tuning risk elsewhere – for example, trimming its combined economic exposure to Austrian lender BAWAG Group from 5.78% to 5.57% of voting rights through shares and instruments such as securities lending and CFDs.
That pattern is consistent with a large asset manager that is not exiting crypto, but reallocating. Legacy, higher-fee, or structurally weaker Bitcoin products bleed; lower-fee, liquid flagships like IBIT ETF and ETHA consolidate share. Institutional desks that want to keep crypto exposure but reduce operational and fee drag will migrate into these core products and away from older wrappers such as GBTC.
For BTC-USD, this means the survival of the ETF trade is not in doubt. The risk lies in the price at which that trade stabilizes, and in how much more capital needs to rotate internally before the flow picture normalizes.

Key BTC-USD Levels: ETF Cost Band Around $81.6K And The $70K Election Floor

Price levels now line up directly with ETF positioning. Around $81,000–$82,000 is where Citi places the average entry for U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, so any rally back into that band will meet holders who are finally flat and happy to reduce risk after a volatile drawdown. That is where the complex will face its first real “supply wall” from ETF investors themselves.
The second level is around $70,000, the region where BTC-USD traded before the U.S. presidential election. Citi flags that zone as the key line between a sharp correction within a still-bullish regime and a move that starts to look like the early stages of another crypto winter. A clean break and weekly close below $70,000, combined with another multi-billion-dollar outflow run, would probably force a reevaluation of the ETF trade from “temporary drawdown” to “cycle risk.”
As long as Bitcoin holds above $70,000, IBIT continues to post net inflows, and altcoin ETFs maintain positive, even if modest, demand, the structure remains one of rotation and digestion rather than exit.

BTC-USD And Bitcoin ETF Complex: Hold Stance With Bearish Short-Term Skew

The combined flow, price and positioning data point to a clear stance on BTC-USD and the Bitcoin ETF complex. Spot ETFs still hold close to $100 billion of assets and retain more than $55 billion in net inflows despite the recent $272.02M daily outflow and the $31.03B AUM drop from the January peak. IBIT remains a magnet for capital, ETHA, XRPZ and FSOL show that selective risk-taking is alive, and there is no sign of structural abandonment of the asset class by institutions.
Short term, conditions are hostile: ETF holders are under water, leverage has been flushed, and flows are unstable. That justifies a Hold view with a negative near-term tilt, not an aggressive Buy at current BTC-USD levels in the low- to mid-$70,000s. Medium term, the size of residual ETF exposure, the continued resilience of IBIT ETF inflows and the fact that altcoin products remain in demand argue against a Sell call that assumes a breakdown of the entire ETF regime.
The right way to read the tape now is that Bitcoin ETFs are in a flow-driven stress phase inside a still-intact structural adoption story: prices are calibrating to where the next wave of durable demand will step in, and that calibration is happening through aggressive, visible ETF flow swings rather than in the dark.

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