You’re still hearing big numbers from the Wall Street ETFs. I talked about this in the February 12, 2025, market update of my newsletter, Crypto is Easy.
Once we take a step back, you can see a downtrend going back months on this chart, which plots the inflows and outflows as a rolling 7-day average.
You can pick one of the three trendlines I’ve drawn below. They all go down.
How can you reconcile the downtrend with the reports of massive institutional interest and demand for exposure?
I don’t know.
Not bad, but . . .
The decline is not necessarily unhealthy.
For an asset the size of Bitcoin, you would expect inflows and outflows to stay in the +-$50 million range.
That would suggest healthy, sustainable interest rather than today’s massive swings (largely due to investment funds and institutions using ETFs to hedge market positions, moving money in and out).
We want steady inflows that suggest accumulation and occasional profit-taking, which is healthier, more sustainable behavior.
“Downtrend” doesn’t mean “bad,” it simply means the pace of inflows has slowed down. The flows are still generally positive and we can expect the ETFs will continue to grow.
But if these ETFs are going to push the market to the lofty numbers you’re thinking about, they need to pick up the pace.
Mark Helfman publishes the Crypto is Easy newsletter. He is also the author of three books and a top Bitcoin writer on Medium and Hacker Noon. Learn more about him in his bio and connect with him on Tealfeed.
