Bitcoin ETFs Lose $1.28B in a Week as 2026 Flows Turn Negative

BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) accounted for $1.21 billion of the total. Bitcoin itself moved less than the flows suggest. It opened the week at $78,354 and traded at $75,939 at 12:13 UTC on 7 November, down 8.18% over 30 days and 40% below its October 2025 record near $126,000.

Daily flows and fund breakdown

Four of the five sessions closed negative. The only inflow came on Wednesday, and Thursday erased it.

On Friday the smaller funds also lost money. Bitwise's BITB shed $20.5 million, ARK's ARKB $20.1 million and Grayscale's GBTC $11.1 million (Farside). Ether products fared no better. US spot Ether ETFs lost $365.3 million over the week, their sixth consecutive weekly outflow, and combined Bitcoin and Ether ETF outflows reached $1.65 billion (SoSoValue).

2026 flows return to negative

The year-to-date figure matters more than the weekly total. Before Monday, the 12 funds held cumulative 2026 net inflows of $368 million. Thursday's session pushed the balance to minus $502 million, and Friday deepened it to minus $914.1 million (The Block, via TechFlow). The funds had spent much of 2026 in deficit and closed the gap only in late September (The Currency Analytics). This week returned them below zero.

Set against the life of the products, the week is smaller. Cumulative net inflows since the January 2024 launch stood at $56.5 billion on 3 November, and total assets at $99 billion (Farside, via HedgeCo.Net and Crypto Briefing). The full week equals 2.3% of that cumulative total. November 2025, the month after Bitcoin's record, saw $3.48 billion leave the funds (The Block). The current run has not yet reached that scale.

So both readings hold. The trend for 2026 has turned. The base built in 2024 and 2025 is still largely in place.

What the outflows show

The concentration is the first thing in the data. IBIT lost $1.21 billion while FBTC took in $93.1 million over the same five days. Selling of this kind points to a group of holders inside one fund, such as advisers or hedge funds rebalancing, rather than a broad retreat across issuers. The fund-level data do not identify who redeemed. Without the quarterly 13F filings, which arrive weeks later, that question stays open.

The macro backdrop is the second. Market coverage this week linked the selling to a wider reduction in risk after a selloff in AI-related equities (CoinGape). On-chain data from CryptoQuant showed short-term holders moving from selling at a profit to selling at a loss. ETF shares bought near the October 2025 peak now trade below cost, and redemptions from that cohort fit the pattern without proving it.

The third point concerns what ETFs were expected to do. A common 2025 thesis held that spot ETFs would anchor capital in Bitcoin and soften the old four-year cycle, a view we covered in our Miles Deutscher profile. Two years of flow data now include a price record in October 2025 and a 2026 balance that has dropped below zero twice. Ran Neuner, who argued in February 2026 that Bitcoin had failed its store-of-value test during market stress, made a related case from the price side (Ran Neuner profile). Flows do not settle that debate. They do show that ETF demand moves with risk appetite, in both directions.

None of this sets a price path. Technical coverage marks $75,000 and the 50-week moving average near $75,562 as the nearest support (crypto.news, 7 November). If outflows continue at this week's pace, those levels could come under test. If flows turn positive next week, the same data would read as positioning noise.

Canadian spot Bitcoin ETFs are not part of these figures. How the domestic funds work, including inside a registered account, is covered in our guides to buying a Bitcoin ETF in Canada and Bitcoin ETFs in a TFSA.