Bitcoin ETF Inflows Flicker Back as IBIT ETF Climbs to $38.97 and BTC Tests $70,000

Bitcoin ETF Inflows And IBIT ETF Price – A Weak Green After A Heavy Red Wave

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) Price Context And Structure Of The Drawdown

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) trades around $69,700–$69,800, up roughly 1–1.3% on the day, after a sharp rebound from below $66,000. That bounce does not change the bigger picture: BTC is still down about 44–50% from the October 2025 all-time high near $126,000–$126,300. The drawdown has now run for roughly 128 days, with a maximum drop above 50%, which historically pushes Bitcoin into a slow recovery regime where bottoms and reversals form over months, not days.
BTC briefly spiked almost 5% on the softer-than-feared U.S. CPI print, jumping roughly 4.9% on Friday to around $69,000, and then grinding toward $69,700 over the weekend. That reaction came as U.S. core inflation slowed to about 2.5% year-over-year, the lowest in nearly five years, while headline CPI printed around 0.2% month-over-month. The move shows BTC behaving again like a high-beta macro asset tied to rates and liquidity, not a separate “uncorrelated” story.

Spot Bitcoin ETF Flow Data – Four Straight Weeks Of Net Outflows

Across U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, the flow tape is still clearly negative. Over the last 10 trading days, cumulative flows are around –18,000 BTC, and spot products have now logged four consecutive weeks of net outflows, with roughly $360 million pulled in the most recent week alone.
There was a brief positive print: one session showed around $15.2 million in net inflows into spot BTC ETFs, enough to technically break a short selling streak, but irrelevant compared with the prior bleed. When you have days with single-digit millions of inflows against weeks with hundreds of millions in redemptions, the regime is still outflow-driven.
Zooming out on the worst day, U.S. spot funds shed roughly $410 million as Bitcoin slid below $66,000, taking the two-day total over $686 million in outflows. That is not retail noise; that is institutional capital moving out of the ETF wrapper in size.

IBIT ETF (NASDAQ:IBIT) – Price Action And Its Outflow Profile

iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) closed around $38.97, up 5.18% on the day, with after-hours trading lifting it toward $39.14 (+0.44%). That move tracks the underlying BTC-USD rebound toward $69,700 and keeps IBIT aligned with spot performance.
Under the surface, however, IBIT has been a major source of outflows in the recent stress episodes. On the heaviest red day, IBIT alone pushed out about $157.56 million, the single largest withdrawal among the spot products. On the more “constructive” day where the complex posted $15.2 million of net inflows, IBIT still showed around –$9.36 million in redemptions, meaning other funds had to work hard just to offset selling in the BlackRock vehicle.
IBIT remains the liquidity center of the Bitcoin ETF universe – high daily turnover, tight spreads, deep order book. That also makes it the primary exit door when institutions de-risk. A rising IBIT price with persistent net outflows is classic bear-market behavior: price bounces on short covering and macro relief, while the smart money quietly shrinks exposure.

Flow Split Across The Bitcoin ETF Complex – Green Prints Without Conviction

Beyond IBIT, the rest of the complex shows the same pattern of tentative engagement. On the latest green day for flows, spot BTC ETFs added $15.2 million net, but that came after prior sessions with combined outflows above $360 million on the week and $686 million over two days in the worst stretch.
On another day, Bitcoin ETFs again managed a positive print of roughly $15 million, led by Fidelity’s fund and the smaller “mini” trusts, while IBIT was negative. This is not the sustained $100+ million per day inflow regime that historically accompanies durable BTC recoveries. It is more of a stabilization attempt: some desks scale in after the dump, others continue to sell into strength.
The key point is that flows have turned slightly less bad, not meaningfully bullish. Four straight weeks of net outflows define the trend; one or two modest inflow days do not overturn that structure.

Macro Backdrop – Strong Data, Delayed Cuts, And Pressure On BTC-USD

The macro environment is not yet friendly for a full-risk allocation back into Bitcoin (BTC-USD) or its ETFs. U.S. retail sales remain on their long-term growth path, and consumer spending has not cracked, which means there is no clear recession signal to force the Federal Reserve into emergency easing.
The Fed held rates at around 3.5–3.75% at the January meeting, and futures pricing now pushes the first cut to mid-year at the earliest. Lower inflation – with core around 2.5% – opens the door, but the Fed is in no rush while the economy is still resilient.
For BTC and its ETFs, that translates into a longer period of tight or “not yet easy” financial conditions. Risk assets have to live with higher real yields for longer, and that caps how aggressively institutions want to deploy fresh capital into a volatile asset that is still almost 50% below its peak.
Next catalysts are all macro: Fed minutes on Feb 18 and PCE + GDP data on Feb 20, where the PCE deflator will show whether inflation momentum is really heading toward the 2% target. Any disappointment on those prints can re-ignite selling in both tech and Bitcoin.

Bear-Market Mechanics – Drawdown Length, Depth And ETF Behavior

The current drawdown profile for BTC-USD matches classic bear-phase behavior. A drop beyond 50% from the high, running longer than 100 days, usually does not end with a single capitulation print followed by a straight-line recovery. Historically, it morphs into a long base-building process with multiple failed rallies, shallow recoveries, and ongoing ETF outflows that slowly fade rather than flip aggressively positive overnight.
ETF flow history backs this. In past cycles, sustained recoveries only started when spot ETFs or equivalent institutional vehicles were pulling in hundreds of millions per day over extended periods, not when they printed one-off inflows of $10–20 million against a backdrop of multi-week redemptions.
Right now, Bitcoin ETFs sit exactly in that “hesitation” zone: enough demand to stop a waterfall, nowhere near enough to declare a regime change.

Spread Across Crypto ETFs – Bitcoin Still The Anchor

On the broader ETF board, Bitcoin remains the anchor asset, but other coins’ products are starting to matter. XRP and Solana (SOL) ETFs have seen modest positive net flows on some recent days – XRP funds adding around $4.5 million with no outflows, Solana ETFs drawing around $1.57 million in fresh capital – yet those numbers are tiny compared with the scale of BTC products.
Total Bitcoin ETF assets sit near $87+ billion, versus about $11–12 billion for Ether ETFs and just under $1 billion for XRP products, with Solana ETFs below $1 billion in AUM. When BTC-USD is under pressure, its ETF flows set the tone for the whole segment, regardless of small inflows elsewhere.

Key Price Levels For Bitcoin (BTC-USD) And IBIT ETF

On the spot side, $70,000 has become immediate resistance and a psychological pivot. The first job for bulls is not just to tag that level, but to hold above it once U.S. desks are fully open and ETF flows refresh after the holiday break.
Below the market, the real “line in the sand” now sits around $60,000. If BTC loses that zone decisively, the market will start to trade the $50,000 downside targets that some banks, including Standard Chartered, are already floating. Those levels align with the magnitude of prior cycle retracements and match the fear now visible in ETF outflows and derivatives hedging.
For IBIT, the key levels mirror that structure on a scaled basis. Around $40 operates as a near-term ceiling tied to BTC holding and breaking $70,000, while a deeper spot correction toward $60,000 would likely drag IBIT back into the low-30s. The ETF is simply the liquid wrapper around the same volatility.

Bitcoin ETF Inflows – Buy, Sell Or Hold At This Stage

From a flows and macro perspective, Bitcoin (BTC-USD) and IBIT sit in a bearish-to-neutral zone rather than a clean bullish setup. Price has bounced toward $69,700, and IBIT has recovered toward $39, but the underlying capital trend is still defined by:

Four consecutive weeks of net outflows around $360 million in the latest week
A recent two-day stretch with over $686 million pulled from U.S. spot ETFs
Cumulative –18,000 BTC in ETF redemptions over the last 10 sessions
Single-day inflows of only $15.2 million – a stabilization signal, not a new bull leg

On that combination of weak but improving flows, long drawdown duration, and an interest-rate backdrop that remains tight, the risk-reward looks more like a Hold than a clear Buy for institutional-style capital.
Short-term traders can work the volatility around $60,000–$70,000 in BTC-USD and IBIT, but a genuine bullish call on “Bitcoin ETF inflows” requires something the market has not yet delivered: multiple weeks of persistent, three-digit-million-per-day net inflows into the spot products, led by IBIT and the other large funds, with Bitcoin holding above $70,000 rather than just visiting it on CPI spikes.

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