Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs gained $23 billion in a week, but only $2.6 billion was truly new capital flowing in.

U.S. spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF funds recorded a total added value of about $23 billion in the previous week, but only $2.6 billion of that actually came from new inflows into the funds. The rest simply resulted from the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum surging while the amount of assets already held in the funds remained unchanged.

This difference is easy to miss amid the exuberant sentiment of a rally, because the total value of assets under management (AUM) of a tokenized asset fund can rise for two completely separate reasons: new capital inflows, or the value of the coins already held in the fund increasing, and in the past week, nearly all of the increase belonged to the second factor.

Specifically, spot Bitcoin ETF funds recorded $1.92 billion in net inflows in the week ending August 21, while Ethereum funds attracted an additional $697.2 million. Combined, these $2.6 billion marked the strongest capital-attracting week for both groups of funds since October 2025, when Bitcoin was nearing its all-time high. 

However, looking at total assets under management, the increase is much larger: the assets of Bitcoin ETFs rose 25.4%, from $76.6 billion to $96.1 billion, while the assets of Ethereum ETFs jumped as much as 35.9%, from $10.5 billion to $14.3 billion. 

If you exclude $2.6 billion of truly new inflows, the remaining roughly $20.7 billion out of the total $23.3 billion increase came entirely from the price effect—Bitcoin and Ethereum became more valuable even if they remained unchanged within existing funds.

Three forces behind the rally

Bitcoin surged from around $62,000 to above $79,000 in a short period of time, equivalent to about a 24% weekly gain and the strongest up week since 2023, while Ethereum rose from below $1,900 to above $2,500, equivalent to roughly 30%. Three distinct drivers combined to create this strong momentum. 

The first and most obvious factor was the U.S. Treasury Department doubling its long-term bond buyback program, thereby weakening the U.S. dollar and encouraging investors to shift toward assets commonly used to hedge against inflation, such as Bitcoin.

The second factor came from policy developments, when President Donald Trump met with leaders of crypto-asset companies at the White House and urged Congress to act on the Clarity Act, a bill intended to clearly define the regulator overseeing each type of crypto asset.

The third driver proved to be the most damaging for investors betting on a decline: when prices broke through key resistance levels, short positions in Bitcoin were forced to buy back assets at a loss to close their positions, triggering a stop-out wave that wiped out about $3 billion in bearish bets in just 24 hours, before another $1 billion was liquidated the following day. Each mandatory buyback continued to push prices higher, setting off the next liquidation cycle. 

In terms of capital allocation, BlackRock’s IBIT fund attracted most of the new inflows; at one point it received as much as 83 cents for every $1 flowing into Bitcoin funds in a single day, while XRP funds also recorded new demand, with $39.78 million in inflows, setting a weekly trading volume record at $271.74 million.

Even so, this rally still hasn’t been enough to wipe out all the damage accumulated since the start of 2026. Bitcoin ETFs have remained in negative net flow territory since the beginning of the year, similar to Ethereum ETFs, although the cumulative shortfall for the two groups of funds has narrowed significantly, from $5.7 billion to $3.1 billion.