On September 15, 2026, investors pulled a net $450.4 million out of US spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Six days later they put a net $999.0 million back in, the largest single day of the year (source: Farside Investors). Over the same days bitcoin went from $75,656.09 to $86,396.74 (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
Numbers like those get read as cause and effect: money went in, so the price went up. The two days that followed complicate that story. Funds took in another $714.7 million on September 22 and $346.9 million on September 23, and bitcoin fell on both days, closing at $84,452.97 on September 23 (source: Farside Investors) (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
The flow figures are real and they matter, but a dollar that enters a fund does not always become a dollar of bitcoin buying on the same day.
What are bitcoin ETF flows?
Bitcoin ETF flows are the dollars that move into or out of US spot bitcoin ETFs in one trading day, measured from the new fund shares created minus the shares redeemed. A positive number is a net inflow and a negative one a net outflow. Trackers such as Farside Investors publish each day's total, fund by fund, in US dollars.
Those shares are created and redeemed by a small group of large brokers called authorized participants, and they work in fixed blocks called baskets. For the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), a basket is 40,000 shares, and only authorized participants can place orders for baskets in exchange for cash or bitcoin (source: iShares Bitcoin Trust 10-Q, SEC EDGAR). On September 23, 2026, one IBIT basket stood for about 22.64 bitcoin (source: iShares). Fidelity's fund, FBTC, uses baskets of 25,000 shares instead (source: Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund 10-Q, SEC EDGAR).
IBIT dominates the numbers. It held 796,799.02 bitcoin on September 23, 2026 (source: iShares). Since the funds launched in January 2024, it has taken in a net $65.0 billion. That is more than the $57.3 billion the whole group has taken in, because Grayscale's older fund, GBTC, has lost a net $27.8 billion over the same period (source: Farside Investors).
How an ETF inflow turns into bitcoin buying
An inflow turns into bitcoin buying in one of two ways, depending on whether the broker creating new shares pays in cash or in bitcoin. In a cash creation, the fund receives dollars and buys the bitcoin itself, through trading firms or Coinbase, so the purchase is new demand arriving in the spot market (source: iShares Bitcoin Trust 10-Q).
For their first year and a half, the spot funds could only work this way. On July 29, 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved orders letting authorized participants create and redeem crypto ETF shares in kind, which means paying in bitcoin (source: SEC). In an in-kind creation the broker delivers bitcoin to the fund in exchange for shares, and in an in-kind redemption it hands shares back and receives bitcoin (source: SEC Release 34-103571).
In-kind creations are now a large part of the picture. In the first six months of 2026, IBIT took in $9.4 billion of bitcoin in kind for new shares and paid out $5.5 billion of bitcoin in kind for shares redeemed (source: iShares Bitcoin Trust 10-Q). For those shares, the fund made no bitcoin purchase of its own: the authorized participant, or a client it acted for, delivered the bitcoin (source: iShares Bitcoin Trust prospectus, SEC EDGAR).
Cash creation | In-kind creation | |
|---|---|---|
What the broker gives the fund | US dollars | Bitcoin |
Who buys the bitcoin | The fund, after the order | The broker or its client, before delivering it |
Allowed for US spot bitcoin ETFs | Since launch in January 2024 | Since the SEC's July 29, 2025 orders |
What the day's flow figure shows | New money, followed by a fund purchase | New shares, paid for with bitcoin the broker or its client already held |
Timing matters too. IBIT values its holdings as soon as practicable after 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time each business day, using a bitcoin reference rate set at 4:00 p.m., and a cash creation order has to be in by 6:00 p.m. ET on the business day before the trade date (source: iShares Bitcoin Trust 10-Q) (source: iShares Bitcoin Trust prospectus). A day's flow figure is dated by the trade date of the shares created and redeemed. It shows that new money arrived; it cannot show exactly when, or where, any bitcoin changed hands.
Do ETF flows move the bitcoin price?
ETF flows and the bitcoin price usually move together on the same day. In 2026, large inflow days mostly came on rising days and large outflow days on falling ones, but a day's flow did little to predict the next day's price.
September 2026 shows the pattern day by day. FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data), the St. Louis Fed's public database, takes its daily bitcoin price at 5 p.m. Pacific time, after the US market close, so each price already includes that day's fund trading:
Date (2026) | Net ETF flow (Farside, US$ millions) | Bitcoin price (FRED) | Change from previous FRED day |
|---|---|---|---|
September 14 | +159.9 | $78,200.38 | +1.8% |
September 15 | −450.4 | $75,656.09 | −3.3% |
September 16 | −295.9 | $76,208.64 | +0.7% |
September 17 | +159.5 | $76,366.40 | +0.2% |
September 18 | +433.0 | $80,844.00 | +5.9% |
September 21 | +999.0 | $86,396.74 | +6.3% from September 20 (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) |
September 22 | +714.7 | $86,249.98 | −0.2% |
September 23 | +346.9 | $84,452.97 | −2.1% |
BloFin Academy compared the two across the 182 trading days of 2026 through September 23. A day's net flow and that day's price change had a correlation of 0.61, on a scale where 1 means the two always move together and 0 means no relationship. Flows lined up with the previous day's price change at 0.36, partly because big flow days tend to come in runs, and with the next day's at only 0.14 (source: Farside Investors) (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis). The price series runs every calendar day while the funds trade on weekdays, so the previous-day comparison sets a Monday's flow against Sunday's price move and the next-day comparison sets a Friday's flow against Saturday's. With FRED's September 24 price now published, the next-day figure covers all 182 days and stays at 0.14, though one year is a short sample. The numbers give no sign that a day's flow sets the next day's price.
September 22 shows why that matters. The $714.7 million that came in that day followed a 6.3% jump, and bitcoin slipped 0.2% while the money arrived (source: Farside Investors) (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis). If you read that inflow as a signal to buy, you would have been buying after the move had already happened.
How big is a day of ETF flows?
The simplest way to size a flow is to turn it into bitcoin and compare it with the new coins miners create. Since the April 2024 halving, each new block creates 3.125 new bitcoin (source: mempool.space, block 840,000). Bitcoin's rules aim for a block about every ten minutes (source: Bitcoin Core source code). That works out to roughly 144 blocks and 450 new bitcoin a day. The bitcoin halving cut that daily amount in half.
Here is the arithmetic for September 21. Divide the $999.0 million inflow by that day's price of $86,396.74, and you get about 11,563 bitcoin, roughly 25.7 days of new supply at 450 a day (source: Farside Investors) (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis). The September 15 outflow of $450.4 million works out to about 5,953 bitcoin at $75,656.09, around 13 days of new supply. The result is an equivalent amount, useful for scale: with in-kind creations, some of those coins changed hands before the flow was reported.
Why can bitcoin fall despite ETF inflows?
Bitcoin can fall on ETF inflow days when other traders sell at the same time or when the fund buying is hedged. Two offsets are easy to check: traders who hold ETF shares as one side of a hedge, and holders waiting for the price to return to what they paid so they can sell.
The basis trade
A basis trade pairs a long position in the ETF with a short position in bitcoin futures, so the trader earns the gap between the two prices without betting on the direction. CME Group's OpenMarkets research described the pattern in November 2025. After the spot ETFs launched, leveraged funds increased their net short positions in CME bitcoin futures, which the authors read as futures sold to hedge spot holdings (source: CME Group OpenMarkets).
Say you buy ETF shares worth 5 bitcoin when bitcoin is at $100,000, and sell one CME bitcoin futures contract at $101,000 a bitcoin. Those are the prices in the OpenMarkets example (source: CME Group OpenMarkets). Each CME bitcoin futures contract covers 5 bitcoin (source: CME Group, Bitcoin futures contract specs). When the futures expire, the two prices converge, so you keep the $1,000-a-bitcoin gap, $5,000 on the position before costs, whichever way bitcoin went. If your purchase leads to new ETF shares, it shows up as an inflow, while your futures sale adds an equal short position, so the net push on the bitcoin price is close to zero.
You can check how big this trade is from public data. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) reports every week how CME bitcoin futures are held. Its leveraged-funds category is typically hedge funds and other money managers (source: CFTC, Traders in Financial Futures explanatory notes). Leveraged funds were net short 7,892 contracts, about 39,460 bitcoin, in the week to September 8, 2026, and 6,354 contracts, about 31,770 bitcoin, in the week to September 15 (source: CFTC history data) (source: CFTC Traders in Financial Futures). When that short shrinks while inflows grow, more of the new money is likely to be a straight bet on bitcoin.
Sellers waiting at the ETF break-even
Many ETF buyers paid more than bitcoin's recent prices, so a rise toward their average cost can bring out sellers. Glassnode estimated that US spot ETF holders as a group break even near $86,000, and said the complex had closed below that level for 228 sessions in a row (source: Glassnode). Glassnode put the group's paper loss at its deepest, roughly $18 billion, on February 5, 2026, and said the rally had narrowed it to about $3.9 billion, in its September 9, 2026 report (source: Glassnode).
Bitcoin reached $86,396.74 on September 21, just above that estimate, then closed at $84,452.97 on September 23, below it again (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis). A holder who has been under water for months and finally gets back to even has a reason to sell, and that selling can absorb fresh inflows.
Bitcoin ETF flows in 2026
Bitcoin ETF flows swung between long runs of selling and buying in 2026. By Farside's daily figures, funds lost a net $4.5 billion in June, the worst month of the year, then took in $3.5 billion in August, the strongest month (source: Farside Investors). The totals for each month were:
Month (2026) | Net flow (US$ millions) |
|---|---|
January | −1,604.8 |
February | −206.6 |
March | +1,315.6 |
April | +2,021.7 |
May | −2,406.0 |
June | −4,509.7 |
July | +172.8 |
August | +3,539.1 |
September 1 to 23 | +2,374.0 |
The running total for 2026 was negative from late May until September 22, when it turned positive again. By September 23 funds had taken in a net $696.1 million for the year (source: Farside Investors). The worst single day of 2026 was January 29, with $817.8 million out, and the largest ever inflow was $1.4 billion on November 7, 2024. September 21's $999.0 million was the biggest day since October 6, 2025 (source: Farside Investors).
Those months line up with bitcoin's own path. June's outflows came as bitcoin dropped to its lowest 2026 price in the FRED series, $58,585.96 on June 30, and August's inflows came as bitcoin went up again in the rally that followed (source: Farside Investors) (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
US spot ether ETFs are tracked the same way, and on September's biggest bitcoin outflow and inflow days they moved in the same direction. On September 15, 2026, ether funds lost a net $142.0 million alongside bitcoin's $450.4 million, and on September 21 they took in $270.0 million (source: Farside Investors, ether). Adding the two together gives a rough read on how much money is entering or leaving US crypto funds as a group.
How to read a bitcoin ETF flow tracker
A bitcoin ETF flow tracker such as Farside Investors' daily table lists one row per trading day and one column per fund, with each figure in millions of US dollars and outflows shown in brackets. Reading one day fund by fund tells you more than the day's headline total.
Take September 15, 2026. The Total column reads (450.4), so the funds lost a net $450.4 million that day. Reading across, IBIT lost $161.7 million, FBTC $214.8 million and GBTC $44.1 million (source: Farside Investors). The fund split matters: a day when one or two funds carry the whole total tells you less about the wider market than a day when money moves in the same direction across most of them.
A dash in a fund column means there is no figure for that fund yet: on the current day, the fund has not reported, and in early rows it had not launched. While every column for today's row is still a dash, the Total column reads 0.0, which means the data has yet to arrive and says nothing about demand. IBIT releases its net asset value after the 4:00 p.m. ET close (source: iShares Bitcoin Trust 10-Q). That close is 8 p.m. Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), or 4 a.m. the next day in Singapore, while US clocks are on daylight saving time, and an hour later in both from November to early or mid-March. Check that every fund column is filled before you read the day's total.
Before you act on a flow headline, run five checks:
Look at the run, then the day. One big day can reverse; five or six days in the same direction say more about demand.
Check which funds moved. Money moving across most funds says more than a total carried by one fund.
Check whether the price moved first. If bitcoin jumped the day before, buying on the inflow headline means buying after the move.
Check the futures short. A rising CFTC net short among leveraged funds suggests part of the inflow is a hedged basis trade.
Check the funding rate. On a perpetual futures contract, a futures contract with no expiry date, the funding rate is a regular payment between traders holding long and short positions. On BloFin's BTCUSDT Perpetual it settles every eight hours, and a negative rate means short sellers are paying, which shows whether leveraged traders agree with the fund buyers.
The live funding rate, and the countdown to the next settlement, are on the BTCUSDT Perpetual page, so you can read it beside the day's flow total.
Using ETF flow data when you trade bitcoin
ETF flow data is most useful as background: a picture of whether large, regulated money is adding to bitcoin or cutting back, read over days and weeks. It works badly as a trigger for a single trade, because the daily figure arrives after the US close and, in 2026, said little about the next day's price.
Flows tell you more when you read them beside a live measure from the market you trade. On September 21, 2026, funds took in $999.0 million (source: Farside Investors). At the next funding settlement on BloFin's BTCUSDT Perpetual, 00:00 UTC on September 22, the rate was +0.0196%, so traders holding long positions were paying those holding shorts (source: BloFin, BTCUSDT funding rate history). BloFin Academy calls a rate between 0.01% and 0.03% that holds for days a normal bullish lean, and puts crowded longs at 0.03% and above (source: BloFin Academy, crypto funding rates). This reading did not hold: the 8:00 and 16:00 UTC settlements that day were −0.0020% and −0.0090%, while the funds took in another $714.7 million (source: BloFin, BTCUSDT funding rate history) (source: Farside Investors). Read side by side, the two numbers show whether leveraged traders agree with the fund money, and here they agreed for only part of the next day.
If you use leverage, size the position for the move you can afford to be wrong about, whatever the flow headline says. Read how leverage and liquidation work before you open a position around a big flow day.
Another way to trade around these numbers is to browse lead traders on BloFin Copy Trading, copy their positions and set your own limits on size and leverage. Copied positions open and close when the lead trader's do, so read how futures copy trading works before you start.
Looking to trade BTC? To get started, create a BloFin account, deposit crypto into your BloFin account, and open the BTC/USDT Spot trading page, BTC/USDC Spot trading page, BTCUSDT Perpetual page or BTCUSD Perpetual page.
Frequently asked questions
What were the latest bitcoin ETF flows?
US spot bitcoin ETFs took in a net $346.9 million on September 23, 2026, led by IBIT with $166.3 million and FBTC with $143.2 million (source: Farside Investors). Every trading day from September 17 to 23 brought net inflows. On September 25, Farside's row for September 24 was still incomplete, with IBIT yet to report, so September 23 was the latest full day (source: Farside Investors).
How often are bitcoin ETF flows negative?
In 2026, through September 23, US spot bitcoin ETFs had 91 days of net outflows and 91 days of net inflows out of 182 trading days, by BloFin Academy's count from Farside's daily figures (source: Farside Investors). The longest run of outflows lasted 13 trading days, from May 15 to June 3, while the longest run of inflows lasted 9, from April 14 to April 24, and was matched from August 17 to August 27.
Which bitcoin ETF is the largest?
BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) is the largest US spot bitcoin ETF, with net assets of about $67.1 billion on September 23, 2026 (source: iShares). At June 30, 2026 its $43.4 billion of net assets was more than four times Fidelity's FBTC, at $10.3 billion (source: iShares Bitcoin Trust 10-Q) (source: Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund 10-Q). The funds charge very different fees: Farside's fund summary lists 0.25% a year for IBIT, 1.50% for Grayscale's GBTC and 0.14% for Morgan Stanley's MSBT, the lowest of the group (source: Farside Investors, fund summary).
Do ETF outflows mean people are selling bitcoin?
An outflow means fund shares were redeemed, and whether bitcoin gets sold depends on how. In a cash redemption the fund sells bitcoin to pay the broker in dollars, while in an in-kind redemption it hands the broker bitcoin, and the broker decides whether and when to sell. IBIT's annual report for 2025 named four firms able to create and redeem in kind, Jane Street, Virtu, JP Morgan and Marex, out of thirteen authorized participants (source: iShares Bitcoin Trust 10-K, SEC EDGAR).
When did spot bitcoin ETFs start trading in the US?
The SEC approved the first US spot bitcoin ETFs on January 10, 2024 (source: SEC Release 34-99306). IBIT began trading on Nasdaq the next day, January 11 (source: iShares Bitcoin Trust 10-Q), and GBTC, which had traded over the counter since 2015, moved to NYSE Arca the same day (source: Grayscale Bitcoin Trust 10-Q, SEC EDGAR).
Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. All facts independently verified. Sources include Farside Investors, FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis), the SEC, iShares, Fidelity and Grayscale filings on SEC EDGAR, the CFTC, CME Group, Glassnode, mempool.space and BloFin, current as of September 23, 2026.
Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold bitcoin or any fund. Trading on a flow headline can mean buying into a move that has already happened, and a daily flow can reverse the next day. A leveraged position opened on that basis can be liquidated in a pullback, losing the margin assigned to it. BloFin services are not available in restricted locations, including the United States. Past performance does not indicate future results. Do your own research and consider your risk tolerance before you trade on BloFin.