Bitcoin ETFs Draw $1.07B in Three Days, Short of Rally-Era Pace

US spot bitcoin ETFs took in a net $1.07 billion over the first three trading days of this week, Oct. 19 to 21, by the daily totals on Farside Investors' flow table. That reverses a run of outflows earlier in the month. But the steep bitcoin rallies since these funds launched were built on months of steady buying, and the pace since July has fallen well short of that.

The three days were uneven. Two strong sessions did almost all the work, with a quiet day in between.

IBIT Carried Monday, FBTC Joined on Wednesday

The week's flows broke down like this, per Farside:

• Oct. 19: net inflow of $526.7 million. BlackRock's IBIT took $665.2 million, while Fidelity's FBTC lost $83.6 million and Grayscale's GBTC lost $54.9 million.
• Oct. 20: net inflow of just $23.2 million.
• Oct. 21: net inflow of $524.8 million, led by IBIT at $235.0 million and FBTC at $212.7 million.

Wednesday's print was broader than Monday's. Seven funds posted inflows and none posted an outflow, compared with one large buyer offsetting two sellers at the start of the week.

The turn follows two weeks with heavy redemptions. The funds lost a net $484.9 million on Oct. 7 and $261.4 million on Oct. 14, extending the selling we tracked when bitcoin ETFs lost $679 million in a week. Farside puts cumulative net flows into the US products at $58.02 billion. IBIT accounts for $66.50 billion of that, and GBTC sits at negative $27.97 billion.

What Past Steep Rallies Looked Like

A CoinDesk analysis of SoSoValue data counts three steep bitcoin rallies since the ETFs launched in January 2024. It defines a steep rally as a gain of more than 50% with no drawdown deeper than 20% from the high along the way.

Across those 199 trading days, the funds took in $46.7 billion, about $235 million a day, according to the same analysis. There were 39 days of $500 million or more and six of $1 billion or more.

The Gap Since July

Bitcoin has gained 39% since July 1, from about $60,000 to $83,500, by the same count. Over that stretch, ETF inflows averaged about $86 million a day. The funds logged only seven days of $500 million or more and not a single $1 billion day.

This week's three sessions averaged roughly $358 million a day, above the rally-era average. Three days is not a trend, though. The earlier rallies held a $200 million-plus daily pace for between seven weeks and four and a half months. These per-day averages were not checked against raw daily data.

ETF flows are also not the only buyer. Futures positioning and direct purchases on spot exchanges can lift the price without showing up in these numbers.

What Would Confirm or Undo the Turn

The test is whether the funds can string together weeks near the $200 million-a-day mark, with more $500 million sessions like Monday and Wednesday. A return to prints like the $484.9 million outflow on Oct. 7 would put flows back on the post-July pattern, where bitcoin has climbed on far thinner ETF demand than in any of its three steep runs.