The just-ended week saw a combined net inflow of $2.6 billion into US spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF products, marking the strongest single-week performance since October 2025.
Bitcoin ETFs contributed $1.918 billion, while Ethereum ETFs attracted $697.2 million. Bitcoin briefly pushed close to the $80,000 mark. It’s hard to imagine that a week ago people were still talking about a drop below $60,000 and a plunge toward $50,000.$BTC
Last week we discussed that if this leg of the rally didn’t continue to attract fresh capital, chances are we’d see another selloff. But for now, the data has overturned that assumption.
Moreover, this round of fund inflows has a notable feature: they’re not distributed evenly, but rather highly concentrated in the leading ETF products. For example, IBIT contributed about $1.09 billion in just four trading days, accounting for a significant portion of total inflows.
This level of concentration indicates that the money entering the market is large institutional capital with clear allocation needs, not retail buying.
Earlier this year, Bitcoin ETF demand was weak for most of the time. The drop at the beginning of the year kept this important buyer out of the market for a period. This week’s inflows of $1.9 billion mean that channel has reopened.
Also worth watching are signals from the derivatives market. As Bitcoin’s price rises by 10% to 11%, open interest increases by only about 4%, and the funding rate stays close to neutral.
Analysts point out that this means the rebound is driven mainly by spot buying and short covering, not by new leveraged capital entering the market. Price increases driven by leverage are usually accompanied by open interest and price rising in sync, but this time, they didn’t.
So the scale of the short washout over these past few days is also astonishing. Since August 19, more than $4 billion in short positions have been forcibly closed, with more than $3 billion wiped out in just two days—on the 19th and the 20th alone.
This kind of concentrated liquidation clears a large amount of resistance in a short time, but it also exposes a reality to the market: forced buying from short squeezes is limited. Once the short positions are cleaned out, the market needs new spot demand to continue to hold up.
In addition, the significance of ETF inflows is not just the numbers themselves. Ecoinometrics’ ETF flow model shows that ongoing ETF purchases are building a support zone for Bitcoin, roughly between $67,000 and $78,000.
If the rise in price attracts trend followers back in, the range could move higher. Therefore, when new demand appears in the market and sellers who are willing to sell decline, the market can complete large-scale repricing within a few days.
With this rapid surge, many institutions have again started calling for hitting 100,000 by year-end. We won’t comment on their expectations for future price action—after all, sometimes the “wolf is coming” story is told by them. But when sentiment shifts, we need to pay attention to this signal.
Of course, how long this rally can truly last still depends on whether subsequent capital can continue to flow in. Previously, ETF demand was weak for a long time; a single strong week is not enough to establish a trend reversal.
Next, we need to observe whether ETF net inflows can be sustained. If the fund inflows can continue, then the upcoming U.S. Treasury 9-month repo plan, as well as the procedural vote in the Senate on the Clear Bill, will provide more narrative support for this pricing logic.
Of course, this week’s Jackson Hole meeting will be an important near-term catalyst.