Bitcoin ETFs lose $5.5 billion in outflows in five weeks as investors pour into gold

Gold ETFs’ assets under management have regained the crown.

3/17/25 11:56AM

Spot bitcoin ETFs celebrated their first birthday in January, and while investors initially poured millions into them, the enthusiasm is fizzling. Some firms are even deciding to shed some crypto ETFs amid a broader tepid crypto market.

Gold and bitcoin (and by extension, gold and bitcoin ETFs) are often pitted against each other in an age-old debate about which asset is a better inflation hedge. With worries around inflation, recession, tariffs, and potential rate hikes, the debate is back. What’s more, the postelection crypto craze and the slew of pro-crypto steps the administration has taken have failed to sustain the initial optimism.

Bitcoin ETFs have seen significant outflows recently, with Bloomberg reporting the funds “recorded their longest run of weekly net outflows since listing in January last year.” Investors pulled over $5.5 billion in total over the past five weeks.

Gold ETFs, meanwhile, have reclaimed the crown as holding the most assets under management between the two. Some of those bitcoin ETF outflows have also rotated right into the shiny metal funds.

The Empire Strikes Back: Gold ETFs have reclaimed the asset crown over bitcoin ETFs thanks to 12% gain this year. https://t.co/ls67z5sIs5
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) March 14, 2025

The numbers speak for themselves. On Election Day, spot bitcoin ETFs’ assets under management stood at about $53 billion. These funds saw huge wins in the months that followed, with nearly $10 billion in inflows during the one month following the election and major gains in bitcoin’s price. On Inauguration Day, BTC rose to an all-time high of $109,114, boosting bitcoin ETFs’ AUM to about $123 billion. As of today, the funds’ totals are down to $95 billion and bitcoin’s price seems stuck around $83,000.

Meanwhile, gold ETFs totaled more than $167 billion in assets under management as of March 15. The price of gold has hit record highs lately, breaking the $3,000 an ounce mark last week.

Put simply: gold is up 13.3% in the past three months, while bitcoin is down 21% over the same time period.

Todd Ruoff, CEO of Autonomys, said that the surge in gold ETFs is due to heightened geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainties, prompting investors to seek the asset’s stability.

He added that some analysts caution that the same factors could sink the price of bitcoin to $73,000.

“This volatility has led to notable outflows from bitcoin ETFs, further widening the gap between gold and bitcoin ETFs,” Ruoff said. “These developments highlight a broader market trend where investors gravitate toward traditional safe-haven assets like gold in response to economic and geopolitical uncertainties.”

Against this backdrop, 21Shares said it would liquidate two bitcoin futures and ethereum futures ETFs on March 28, due to a “routine review... and a maturing digital assets landscape.”

Sage D. Young6/16/26

Hyperliquid reclaims all-time high

HYPE, the native token powering perpetuals exchange Hyperliquid and its underlying blockchain, rebounded to reclaim its all-time high previously set at the start of the month.

Treasury firms Hyperliquid Strategies and Hyperion DeFi have also rallied as the token increased double digits in the last 24 hours to trade as high as $76.70, rising past its record price set nearly two weeks ago, according to CoinGecko. In the interim between all-time highs, HYPE pulled back to around $53.

The token has several tailwinds, the first coming from ETF flows. Since their inception in May, HYPE ETFs have yet to record negative weekly outflows, posting a cumulative total net inflow of $171.8 million, per SoSoValue.

The second comes from Hyperliquid spending basically everything it earns in fees to buy HYPE, a mechanism embedded into the protocol’s codebase.

The venue’s buyback funding mechanism is set to add a new source of yield. Validators of the network activated “AQAv2,” which means stablecoin deployers will share about 90% of reserve yield revenue on their supply within the protocol.

Around $6.1 billion of Circle’s USDC resides in Hyperliquid, per DefiLlama. Accrual begins on August 26 and the first payment is made on October 3, the network announced in its Discord channel last week.

A substantial amount of capital is riding on different positions of HYPE. In total, a move down to under $53 would result in the liquidation nearly 1.8 million HYPE worth of leveraged long positions on the on-chain perps venue, or $131.7 million, data from CoinGlass shows. For the upside, a climb above $100 results in the liquidation of more than 3 million worth of leveraged HYPE short positions, or $221.5 million.

HYPE’s rebound to all-time high comes after Michael Selig, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, defended his agency’s decision to approve regulated perpetuals, or futures contracts without expiration dates, CNBC reported on Monday.

Last month, the CFTC approved bitcoin perpetual futures trading in the US through regulated prediction markets firm Kalshi and an affiliate of centralized exchange Coinbase.

“Perps are highly likely to become lightly regulated and thus approved in the US,” said David Pakman, head of venture investments at CoinFund.

“We expect to see perps for many different types of assets, from commodities to equities,” Pakman told Sherwood News.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

6/16/26

Bitcoin is “caught between flow deterioration and macro relief”

Sage D. Young6/15/26

Crypto market snaps back as sentiment lifts, with altcoins from ethereum to XRP soaring

The market capitalization of the crypto industry has jumped around $83.2 billion in the last 24 hours, with privacy-focused token Zcash and worldcoin, the native cryptocurrency of the network backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, leading market gains, jumping over 22%.

But the last 24 hours have been good across the board:

Ethereum has increased more than 9% to trade above $1,800, amid BitMine Immersion Technologies acquiring $139.2 million worth of ethereum.
XRP and solana have rebounded from multiyear lows, each rising roughly 10%.
HYPE has bounced up 12%.
Dog-based memecoins dogecoin and shiba inu have chased gains of more than 4%.

“Investors have been eager to see some positive signs around the Iranian conflict ending, coupled with hopeful outlooks around the CLARITY act, both breathing some life into assets,” Kairos Research cofounder Ian Unsworth told Sherwood News.

Simon Shockey, a crypto strategist at crypto wallet infrastructure firm Privy, said the upswing stems from several things converging. He pointed to how alt markets broadly were “very oversold” following the bug found in Zcash that shook confidence.

Friday, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox said Anthropic didn’t find any more serious bugs with the Zcash protocol after Shielded Labs requested the AI firm run a security audit of the network with Mythos.

Shockey added that the pool of willing sellers has dwindled. “Even if structurally, AI is a much more compelling and asymmetric bet in the eyes of allocators, many of these crypto assets have simply run out of marginal sellers despite some shorter-term narrative-driven pumps. The only people left to sell at this point are the teams themselves and VCs.”

“Net-net: oversold conditions plus exhausted seller bases plus a macro backdrop that’s stabilized equals a snapback, especially in names that have real usage or community conviction behind them,” Shockey told Sherwood.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

6/15/26

Bitcoin hits highest level in 2 weeks following news of Iran deal

Bitcoin crossed $66,500 Monday morning as the broad crypto market welcomed the return of a risk-on mood.