Around $690 million came through BlackRock's IBIT, about 80% of the week's total, according to Stephen Wundke, strategy and revenue director at Algoz Technologies. On Friday alone, IBIT drew $86.7 million and Fidelity's FBTC $41 million, while Invesco's BTCO shed $19.4 million and VanEck's HODL lost $10.6 million.
Momentum eased into the weekend, with daily inflows slipping from $128.7 million on Thursday to $98.9 million on Friday. The funds closed the week holding $79.5 billion, about 6.1% of Bitcoin's market capitalization.
"It shows that after the AI craze briefly entered a pullback period, institutional funds have started buying Bitcoin again," Tim Sun, senior researcher at HashKey, told Decrypt, adding that the flows likely combine portfolio rebalancing with a degree of basis trading.
The macro readSoftening AI-linked equities have loosened the pull on global risk capital, Sun said, sending money toward less crowded assets. He identified $60,000 to $61,000 as support the market has repeatedly tested.
He cautioned against reading the week as a turn. The inflows are "not enough to support a trend reversal," Sun said, noting that hike odds have not disappeared and long-dated Treasury yields remain elevated.
Butterfill cited three consecutive weeks of whale accumulation after some $40 billion of whale selling since October 2025, alongside $1.05 billion of inflows into digital asset investment products globally last week, a broader measure than U.S. Bitcoin ETFs alone and a fifth straight positive week. That pattern "increasingly resembles capitulation followed by early re-accumulation," he wrote. A move toward $100,000 would require "a clearer deterioration in employment data and a more meaningful reduction in rate expectations," he added.
The Coldcard theory What could break the rangeBoth looked to the Middle East instead. "Any realistic Iran peace deal would dampen inflation fears and very much temper the mood for rate rises," Wundke said, calling that the likelier catalyst for a market he described as oversold. For now, he added, it "mostly feels like 'Groundhog Day,'" with holiday malaise keeping volumes thin.
