ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF Bleeds: Records Highest Outflows Since August
Bitcoin ETF investors are hitting the exits—hard.
The ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF just posted its worst outflow numbers since August, signaling potential trouble for institutional crypto adoption.
Massive Capital Flight
Investors yanked millions from the fund this week, marking the largest single-week withdrawal in over two months. The numbers don't lie—when the smart money moves, markets notice.
Meanwhile, traditional finance executives are probably patting themselves on the back about 'proving crypto's instability'—while quietly repositioning their own portfolios.
This could be a temporary pullback or the start of something bigger. Either way, it's a stark reminder that in crypto, the only constant is volatility.
Markets turn risk-off
"There is a short-medium term shift, especially post the comments on last Friday towards a more risk-off state, especially given market exuberance across risk assets and uncorrelated assets over the last few months," Ganesh Mahidhar, Investment Professional at Further Ventures, told Decrypt.
The combination of the Ethereum-based USDe stablecoin’s depeg on Friday and a social media-driven boycott movement against Binance has pushed concerns about systemic risk back into focus, particularly at this stage of the post-halving Bitcoin cycle, he added.
Despite managing just 50,000 BTC versus BlackRock's 800,000 and Fidelity's 210,000, ARKB "is generally one of the funds leading the charge" on outflow days, Sean Dawson, Head of Research at Derive, told Decrypt, adding how "ARK's holdings have held consistently in the 40-50K BTC since March 2024."
ARK's fund sees "investors more frequently rotate in and out of BTC as a speculative asset" compared to BlackRock and Fidelity's vehicles, which house longer-term holders, he said.
Whether the Bitcoin ETF outflow streak continues depends on upcoming catalysts, particularly the Federal Reserve's October 29 FOMC meeting and the ongoing Q3 earnings season, Mahidhar said.
“Market exuberance needs to be supported by revenue and cash FLOW growth in U.S. markets — if that happens and the FOMC meeting goes well, we may see a staunching in the bleed out,” he noted.
Bitcoin is trading at $104,629, down 6.3% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data, still nursing losses from the tariff-triggered crash.
