Spot crypto ETFs give back ground after their strongest week since April
US bitcoin and ether funds took in a combined $1.1bn in the first week of August. The second week ran the other way, ending a five-week streak for ether products.
NEW YORK —
The rebound in US spot crypto exchange-traded funds lasted a week. After pulling in roughly $1.1bn combined in the first five sessions of August — the strongest week for either category since April — bitcoin and ether products spent the following week in net redemption.
The earlier surge was concentrated. Spot bitcoin funds accounted for about $853m of the inflow, and a single issuer's fund took more than eighty per cent of that figure. Ether products added around $245m, extending what was then a five-week run of positive flows and lifting the category's cumulative net intake above $11bn since launch.
That streak has now broken. Ether funds recorded net withdrawals last week, though shallower than the outflows from bitcoin vehicles, which posted only one positive session across the five days. Bitcoin traded near $63,000 through the period and ether around $1,890, so the flow reversal came without a dramatic price move to explain it.
Flow data of this kind is a poor short-term price signal and a reasonable medium-term positioning signal. Weekly swings between inflow and outflow are consistent with rebalancing by allocators who treat these funds as a liquid sleeve, rather than with wholesale exit. The five-week ether streak was the more interesting datapoint, and its end is worth watching against the staking amendments now in front of the SEC.
Miners, meanwhile, continue to redirect capacity toward artificial intelligence hosting contracts, a shift that changes who holds newly issued coins and how quickly they are sold. That structural change is likely to matter more to supply than any single week of fund flows.