Glassnode Report: Bitcoin & Ethereum ETFs Still Awaiting Major Demand Revival

ETF euphoria fades as on-chain data reveals a sobering truth.

The Post-Launch Plateau

Remember the frenzy? The regulatory green lights, the ticker symbols flashing across trading screens, the promises of institutional floodgates swinging wide open. Fast forward, and the data tells a quieter story. Analysis from blockchain intelligence firm Glassnode indicates that the much-hyped Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are stuck in a holding pattern—significant, sustained capital inflows remain conspicuously absent.

Reading the On-Chain Tea Leaves

Forget the daily price gyrations. The real narrative is written in the immutable ledger. Metrics tracking fund flows, wallet movements, and aggregate investor behavior aren't painting a picture of renewed institutional FOMO. Instead, they suggest a market in digestion mode. The initial allocation rush has settled, leaving a vacuum where the next wave of demand was supposed to be. It's the financial equivalent of a launch party where most guests showed up for the free champagne and then quietly left.

The Waiting Game

This isn't necessarily a doom signal—it's a reality check. Mainstream adoption was never going to be a single, vertical line on a chart. The infrastructure is now in place, a silent, ticking option for traditional portfolios. The trigger for the next phase? It could be a macro shift, a regulatory clarity milestone, or simply the slow, grinding work of financial advisors getting comfortable with the new tickers in their systems. Until then, the ETFs sit, traded but not yet turbocharged, awaiting a catalyst that moves beyond speculative fervor.

The market has a funny way of humbling even the most elegant financial products—turns out, wrapping volatility in a familiar wrapper doesn't automatically make risk-averse capital come knocking.

Bitcoin & Ethereum Spot ETFs Have Been Observing Net Outflows

As pointed out by on-chain analytics firm Glassnode in a new post on X, the average netflow for both Bitcoin and Ethereum spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) has remained negative recently. Spot ETFs are investment vehicles that allow investors to gain indirect exposure to an underlying asset. In the case of cryptocurrencies, this means that traders never have to interact with blockchain infrastructure themselves. Instead, the fund buys and custodies tokens on its behalf.

ETFs and similar investment vehicles for digital assets are available in various parts of the world, but currently, the most dominant funds are those based in the United States. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) first approved spot ETFs for bitcoin in January 2024 and for Ethereum in July 2024. Since their establishment, ETFs have grown into a cornerstone of the market, tapping into demand from traditional institutional entities.

First, here is a chart that shows the trend in the 30-day simple moving average (SMA) of the Bitcoin spot ETF netflow over the last couple of years:

As shown in the above graph, the US Bitcoin spot ETFs saw their 30-day SMA netflow dip into negative territory back in November, suggesting net capital outflows began.

Since then, the indicator has mostly remained inside this territory, although the capital bleeding has slowed down recently. Earlier this month, the 30-day SMA netflow even flipped into the positive zone, but the net inflows lasted only briefly, with the indicator quickly returning to the red region.

A similar pattern has also been witnessed with Ethereum spot ETFs, as the chart below shows.

From the graph, it’s visible that the US Ethereum spot ETFs have also seen their 30-day SMA netflow return to the underwater zone after a brief wave of net capital inflows.

This means that interest in the digital asset market as a whole continues to be down among ETF users. “There is no sign of renewed demand,” noted the analytics firm. It now remains to be seen how long the wave of outflows will go on.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is floating around $88,000, down 3.5% in the last seven days.