The fund did not record outflows for nearly the first four months of its history.
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) shed a single-day record of $523 million in investments on Tuesday, extending a five-day streak of outflows that has dovetailed with the decline of its underlying asset.
The exchange-traded fund has hemorrhaged more than $1.4 billion in assets since last Thursday, according to UK asset manager Farside Investors, the highest total for any consecutive day stretch in its 22-month history.
“IBIT had worst day of outflows ever yesterday… ugly stretch,” Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas wrote on X, although he noted that net inflows still topped “an astronomical” $25 billion for the year.
The losses have come amid a six-week market swoon precipitated by macroeconomic uncertainties, including the longest government shutdown in U.S. history and concerns about inflation, an ongoing trade war, slumping jobs data pointing toward a recession, and the impact of AI initiatives on big tech firms’ balance sheets.
Bitcoin touched a seven-month low of $89,037 on Wednesday and was recently trading at $89,204, a more than 4% drop over the past 24 hours and its lowest level in seven months, according to crypto markets data provider CoinGecko. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is now down 4% year-to-date, just six weeks after hitting a record high above $126,000.
In a Myriad prediction market, users forecast just a 28% chance that Bitcoin will hit $115,000 in its next move, rather than falling to $85,000-a sharp reversal of trendlines from just a week ago that reflects investors’ sour mood. (Disclaimer: Myriad is a unit of Dastan, the parent company of Decrypt.)
IBIT shares were recently off 3.6% on Wednesday and have tumbled more than 16% over the past month, according to Yahoo Finance.
The ETF set its previous record of $463 million in outflows last Friday. It had previously only shed more than $400 million in assets on two other days, rare missteps for the dramatically successful fund. In June, IBIT reached $70 billion in inflows faster than any ETF in the industry’s 32-year history.
IBIT now manages more than $73 billion in assets, more than three times the AUM of its closest rival, with the gains coming as institutional interest in Bitcoin has risen. Harvard University recently upped its position in IBIT to 6.8 million shares worth about $442 million, from a previous holding of 1.9 million shares, according to a regulatory filing.
Other Bitcoin ETFs have also been hard-hit, with the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) and Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) shedding more than $266 million and $146 million in investments over the past five trading days, respectively, although none on Tuesday. The 11 spot Bitcoin funds collectively control more than $130 billion in assets.
The Bitcoin funds declines have come even as fledgling Solana funds have added investments, particularly the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (BSOL), which has posted net inflows on every day of its less than three-week history and now oversees $611 million in AUM. On Wednesday, 21Shares Solana ETF (TSOL) became the fifth Solana-tracking fund to list on a U.S. exchange.
