U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have just gone through their harshest redemption cycle since launch. According to figures summarized by Claude of TechFlow, the products recorded 13 consecutive trading days of net outflows between May 15 and June 3, with cumulative withdrawals of about $4.37 billion, equivalent to roughly 59,000 BTC. When combined with the decline in Bitcoin’s market price over the same period, total assets across the ETF complex fell from about $104.29 billion to about $82.83 billion in three weeks, a contraction of around $21.5 billion.
A 13-Day Outflow Streak Sets a New Post-Launch Record
Fund flows are one of the clearest ways to assess institutional positioning in Bitcoin, because spot ETFs buy and sell actual Bitcoin in response to investor creations and redemptions. Galaxy Research said the May 15 to June 3 run of 13 consecutive net outflow days was the longest redemption streak for U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs since this group of products began trading in January 2024. The previous record was set in February 2025, when the funds saw eight straight days of outflows totaling $3.2 billion. The latest round more than doubled that earlier benchmark in duration and scale.
Galaxy Research also noted that outflows over several rolling windows, including seven-day, 10-day and 20-day periods, all reached record levels during this stretch. That indicates the selling pressure was not limited to a single heavy redemption day, but persisted across a longer interval. The withdrawal wave also pushed 2026 year-to-date cumulative net flows into negative territory for the first time. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas confirmed that year-to-date flows had turned negative for the first time this year.
IBIT Sits at the Center of Redemptions as ETF Assets Shrink by $21.5 Billion
BlackRock’s IBIT accounted for the largest share of the redemptions. Data from Farside Investors showed that IBIT alone lost about $3.3 billion during the outflow period, representing roughly three quarters of the total withdrawals. Fidelity’s FBTC followed with about $456.6 million in outflows, while Grayscale’s GBTC saw about $303.6 million leave the fund. IBIT had been the strongest asset gatherer among the spot Bitcoin ETFs since launch, but in this redemption cycle it became the main center of withdrawals.
The fall in fund assets was amplified by Bitcoin’s price decline. The Defiant, citing SoSoValue data, reported that total assets across all U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs dropped from about $104.29 billion on May 15 to about $82.83 billion on June 3, a decrease of roughly $21.5 billion in three weeks. The decline reflected two forces acting at the same time: redemptions removed capital from the funds, while Bitcoin fell from above $80,000 to around $63,000, a drop of about 21%, reducing the value of the remaining holdings.
Measured by holdings, the ETFs’ Bitcoin balance fell to about 1.277 million BTC, around 7.2% below the peak reached in October 2025. The funds currently hold Bitcoin equal to about 6.36% of Bitcoin’s circulating market capitalization, down from more than 7% at the mid-May high. One redemption stood out on May 28, when BlackRock’s IBIT posted $527.8 million in single-day net outflows, the second-largest daily redemption in the fund’s history. For the whole of May, U.S. Bitcoin ETFs recorded $2.43 billion in monthly net outflows, the largest monthly outflow on record, with $1.42 billion coming in the final week alone.
June 12 Brings a Clean No-Outflow Session
The first turn in direction appeared in early June. On June 5, Bitcoin ETFs ended the 13-day outflow streak with a modest $3.05 million in net inflows. The amount was small relative to the overall size of the market, but the direction changed. On the same day, Ethereum ETFs also ended 17 consecutive days of outflows, bringing in $19.3 million in net inflows, all of which came from BlackRock’s ETHA.
The session viewed more closely by institutions came on June 12, a Friday. According to SoSoValue, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $85.84 million in single-day net inflows that day. Five funds brought in new capital, while the other seven reported zero net flows. None of the 12 products posted a net outflow. This full set of funds avoiding outflows was the type of clean trading day that bullish observers use to assess whether redemption pressure is easing.
Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, included the development in his list of evidence that Bitcoin had bottomed. In a brief report to clients on Friday, Kendrick wrote that crypto-asset prices had already reached the low of the current cycle, corresponding to Bitcoin at about $59,000, down 53% from a $126,000 high. He said three indicators were needed for confirmation: Strategy reporting that it had bought more Bitcoin the previous week, ETFs recording positive inflows on Friday, and oil prices continuing to move lower. He closed the report with the line: “Winter is over, welcome back to crypto spring.”
A single day of $85.84 million in inflows does not offset roughly $4.4 billion in withdrawals over three weeks. Still, a trading day in which no fund reported net outflows provides a starting point for evaluating whether selling pressure has peaked. Cryptopolitan cited calculations showing that ETF flows can currently explain about 45% of Bitcoin’s weekly price movements. Since their January 2024 launch, these Bitcoin ETFs still have cumulative net inflows of more than $55 billion, less than $10 billion below the historical peak. Balchunas therefore described the $4.4 billion outflow as a meaningful momentum reversal rather than a structural collapse.