Bitcoin ETFs See $349M Outflow as Whales Sell, Retail Buyers Step In

Spot Bitcoin ETFs listed in the US recorded their steepest single-day outflow in nearly three weeks on Friday, with $349 million pulled from all 11 products combined, according to data from Farside.

The withdrawals came as Bitcoin slid back toward $68,000 after briefly touching $74,000 earlier in the week — a run-up that, based on on-chain data, appears to have been the trigger for a significant wave of selling by large holders.

Crypto analytics platform Santiment tracked the behavior of wallets holding between 10 and 10,000 Bitcoin — a group commonly referred to as whales — and found they had been building positions aggressively between Feb. 23 and March 3, when prices were stuck in the $62,900 to $69,600 range.

Once Bitcoin crossed $74,000 on Wednesday, those same wallets began offloading. By Friday, roughly 66% of what they had accumulated over that 10-day window had been sold back into the market.

Smaller investors moved in the opposite direction. Wallets holding less than 0.01 Bitcoin — the retail end of the market — have been adding to their positions as prices fell.

According to Santiment, that kind of divergence between large and small holders has historically pointed to more downside ahead.

“When retail buys while whales sell, it typically signals that the correction is not yet over,” the platform said in a Friday report.

Bitcoin’s slide pushed the Crypto Fear & Greed Index down six points to a score of 12 on Saturday, placing it deep in “Extreme Fear” territory. The index measures market sentiment across a range of factors including volatility, trading volume, and social media activity.

Some analysts said that Bitcoin could still face another drop if buyers fail to defend the current price zone. A loss of support around the $67,000–$68,000 range may trigger a move back toward recent lows to gather liquidity before any potential rebound.

Not everyone sees a breakdown coming. Economist Timothy Peterson pointed to the Bitcoin Price to Metcalfe Value chart — a model that measures Bitcoin’s price against the estimated value of its network based on user activity — and said the $60,000 level has held as a bottom in every prior cycle.

“About 99.5% chance it stays above $60k,” Peterson wrote on X.

Bitcoin had already tested that level once this cycle, falling to $60,000 on Feb. 6 during a broader pullback from an all-time high of $126,000 set in October.

Since then, it has managed a partial recovery, though Friday’s ETF outflows and the continued whale selling suggest the market has not yet found stable footing.

Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from TradingView