US spot Bitcoin ETFs extend inflows to six weeks, pulling in $3.4B

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have logged six straight weeks of net inflows, attracting a combined $3.4bn since early April, the longest run of positive weekly flows since late July 2025, according to data from SoSoValue cited by BeInCrypto on Saturday.

The streak began the week of 2 April and has averaged $568m of net inflows per week, well below the $1.51bn weekly average set during the seven-week run that ended 25 July last year and pulled in $10.58bn. The largest single weekly haul of the current streak landed in the period ending 17 April at $996.38m, the strongest five-day total since mid-January.

Bitcoin (BTC) traded near $81,300 on Friday after a January-to-March drawdown that took prices as low as $76,000. JPMorgan strategists led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou this week argued bitcoin is overtaking gold as the preferred debasement trade, citing a $1.69bn weekly inflow into spot bitcoin product as evidence of broadening institutional reserve demand, in a note flagged on scramnews Thursday.

Where the flows came from

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) accounted for the bulk of the new money. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas estimated IBIT captured between $2.1bn and $3bn of April’s net inflows, lifting holdings to roughly 812,000 BTC, equivalent to about 3.8 per cent of all bitcoin in circulation and placing IBIT in the top 1 per cent of all US ETFs by flow metrics. “Every single rolling period we track is now positive, haven’t seen that in months,” Balchunas wrote on X.

Fidelity’s FBTC was the next-largest contributor. On 4 May the spot bitcoin ETF complex took in $532.21m, with IBIT pulling $335.49m and FBTC adding $184.57m, per Farside Investors data. Grayscale’s GBTC, the highest-fee product in the cohort at 1.5 per cent, drew no new money on those sessions, in line with the steady asset rotation away from the converted trust into lower-fee competitors that has run since the cohort launched in January 2024.

Single-day inflows peaked on 1 May at $629.73m. Cumulative new-month flows pushed above $1.69bn through 6 May before reversing.

Where the flows did not go

Demand stayed concentrated in spot bitcoin product. Spot Ether (ETH) ETFs posted a net outflow of $82.47m for the week ending 1 May before recovering to a $70.49m inflow the following week, per SoSoValue. Spot funds tracking XRP and Solana (SOL), both of which began trading earlier this year, recorded weekly outflows in the period ending 1 May.

The divergence sits with the wider rotation in crypto markets that has favoured bitcoin as institutional reserve allocations broaden. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s hold-for-longer rate framing and elevated Treasury yields have squeezed fixed-income alternatives, while spot bitcoin has held a relatively tight $80,000-to-$85,000 range since late March. Boston Fed President Susan Collins flagged Iran-shock inflation pressure as keeping policy rates elevated into 2027 in remarks on Thursday.

The cooling tape

Daily flows turned negative this week after the streak’s run. Bitcoin ETFs shed $277.5m on 7 May, the heaviest single-day outflow since mid-March, followed by a further $145.65m on 8 May. The two-day reversal coincided with bitcoin briefly slipping below $80,000 before reclaiming the level on dovish remarks from Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins about formalising rules for on-chain markets.

Whether the six-week streak holds as a weekly counter depends on the next two sessions. SoSoValue tracks flows in trading-day buckets that aggregate to a calendar week and resets each Friday. Even with the May 7 and May 8 outflows, the week ending 9 May was on track to remain net positive, though the cushion was the slimmest of the six.

What it does not yet match

The current streak runs alongside, but does not yet match, last summer’s surge in scale. Weekly inflows during the July 2025 run averaged $1.51bn across seven weeks, almost three times the $568m average of the current run. Spot bitcoin product recorded its single largest week of net inflows in the cohort’s history during that earlier period, with the cumulative $10.58bn pulled over those seven weeks accounting for roughly a third of the asset class’s total inflows in 2025.

A return to those volumes would likely require a clearer rate-cut path from the Federal Reserve and the formalisation of the SEC’s proposed framework for on-chain markets, which is set to be rolled out through 2026 rulemaking. The Senate Banking Committee’s CLARITY Act markup is scheduled for 14 May, which institutional allocators are watching for guidance on spot-ETF treatment of altcoins and the OCC charter pathway for crypto custodians, the route Kraken parent Payward filed for last week.

For now, the streak is intact, BlackRock remains the dominant single buyer, and the rest of the spot crypto-ETF complex is still searching for the institutional demand that has so far concentrated almost entirely on bitcoin. Bitwise’s research arm this week ranked BNY Mellon and JPMorgan as the two US banks with the broadest crypto exposure by ETF custody and balance-sheet activity, a sign the same wholesale plumbing that channels IBIT subscriptions is consolidating around a narrow handful of names.