Bitcoin ETFs String Together a Five-Day Inflow Streak as Strategy Sells Below Cost Again
The week in flows
US spot Bitcoin ETFs took in +$865.3M net over the five sessions from August 3 through August 7 — five consecutive positive days, the longest streak of the summer. Every session in the reporting week closed green: +$170.1M on August 3, +$211.5M on August 4, +$244.4M on August 5, +$137.6M on August 6, and +$101.7M on August 7, a gradually decelerating but unbroken run.
The honest read on that streak is that it's long rather than large. The category's flow z-score sits at just +0.08 against its own two-year history — the 59th percentile of all sessions since spot ETFs launched — which is close to an ordinary week, not a statistical outlier. Compare that to the -1.67σ outflow week this same recap flagged back on July 13: this week's move is real and welcome, but it's a steady grind higher, not a blowout.
What makes it more notable is how much of the past month's demand arrived in these five days. The trailing 20-session net flow stands at +$913.2M — meaning this single week accounts for roughly 95% of the entire past month's net inflow. Zoom out further, though, and the picture sobers: the trailing 60-session net flow is still -$6,933.0M, deeply negative, with a 60-day average of -$115.55M a day. One good week doesn't undo a bad quarter; it's the first sign of one turning, at best.
The week's final session had an identifiable catalyst. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a surprise 23,000-job decline in July payrolls on August 7 — the first net monthly loss since the pandemic recovery, compounded by downward revisions stripping 103,000 jobs from the May and June prints — and September rate-hike odds on the CME FedWatch tool slid from roughly 55% to 40% within the day, per The Block's coverage. Bitcoin itself broke back above $65,000 intraday on the print. That the ETF category still closed August 7 with its smallest inflow of the week despite a genuinely bullish macro surprise is worth sitting with — it suggests the streak was already decelerating on its own terms before the jobs data landed, not accelerating because of it.
Where the inflows are concentrated
BlackRock's IBIT did almost all of the work. Its week-total inflow of +$693.5M accounts for 80.1% of the category's entire net demand over the period, and it's now riding its own five-session positive streak in lockstep with the category. Fidelity's FBTC added +$116.5M, ARK 21Shares' ARKB +$50.8M (helped by a standout +$37.6M single session on August 5), Bitwise's BITB +$25.9M, and Morgan Stanley's MSBT +$21.4M.
Not every fund participated. VanEck's HODL — the lone green shoot called out in this recap's July 13 edition — reversed hard, shedding -$53.6M over the week and now sitting on a 3-session negative streak through August 7. Invesco Galaxy's BTCO lost -$12.7M, almost entirely on a single -$19.4M outflow on August 7 that offset three quiet, flat sessions before it. Franklin Templeton's EZBC (+$9.2M) and Grayscale's legacy vehicles (GBTC +$7.5M, its BTC "mini" trust +$6.8M, both confined to a single August 6 session) rounded out the smaller moves.
Breadth on the latest session tells a more concentrated story than the five-day streak implies: just 4 of 11 reporting products closed August 7 positive, a 36.4% breadth reading, with IBIT, FBTC, BITB and ARKB carrying the tape while HODL and BTCO went the other way. Product concentration (HHI 0.40) and issuer concentration (HHI 0.43) both remain elevated — this is a category where one or two funds still decide the week, and this week that fund was IBIT.
Zooming out
Cumulative net flow into the category since inception stands at +$52.24B, still $10.49B, or roughly 16.7%, below the $62.7B peak reached earlier in the cycle. Life-to-date, BlackRock's IBIT remains the category's dominant absorber at +$61.17B (a 117% contribution to net flow — more than the entire category's net total on its own), against Grayscale's legacy vehicles' combined -$24.82B drag.
The period totals put the week's contribution in context: month-to-date net flow is +$865.3M — identical to the week-to-date figure, since this reporting week opened the trading month — and quarter-to-date sits at +$1,038.1M. Year-to-date net flow, however, remains firmly negative at -$4,351.7M. A strong week narrows that gap; it doesn't close it.
Strategy sells again, below its own cost basis
Strategy's August 3 8-K disclosed the sale of 1,638 BTC for $104.73M in proceeds, at an average price of $63,957 — roughly 15.3% below the company's own $75,476 average cost basis heading into the sale, a realized loss on this tranche of approximately $18.9M. Total holdings now stand at 842,138 BTC against a $63.51B cost basis, for a $75,419 average cost per coin. Bitcoin traded around $64,940 on August 7, meaning the position as a whole now carries an unrealized loss of roughly $8.8B, or about 13.9% underwater against that average cost — Yahoo Finance's Bitcoin price coverage for August 7 is the source for that spot reference.
This was Strategy's second disclosed sale since its holdings peaked at 847,363 BTC on June 22 — the last filing in which the company actually added to its position. Since then: no change on June 29, a 3,588 BTC sale on July 6, no change on July 13, July 20 and July 27, and now this 1,638 BTC sale on August 3. Net effect: holdings are down 5,225 BTC, or about 0.62%, from the June 22 peak, across six consecutive filings without a single purchase.
Reporting from The Coin Republic and Simply Wall St on the filing describe roughly $52.4M of the bitcoin-sale proceeds going toward preferred dividend payments and another $52.3M toward repurchasing STRC (Variable Rate Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock) shares. Those figures are not yet broken out inside bryptoflows' own treasury dataset, so they're attributed to that outside reporting rather than the API — worth flagging as sourced from filing coverage, not the dashboard itself.
Financing the sale
Strategy's at-the-market common stock program sold 3,011,361 shares in the same period for $290.6M in net proceeds. Per the same outside reporting, roughly $250.0M of that went to build the company's USD Reserve (which stood at $4.0B as of August 2), with $28.9M toward STRC repurchases and $11.7M to cash. Its four preferred programs — STRC, STRD, STRF, and STRK — disclosed no new issuance this period, and combined available capacity across all five programs (common plus the four preferred) sits at $47.94B. Whatever is funding the preferred obligations, it isn't a shortage of authorized capacity — it's a company now routing common-stock proceeds and bitcoin-sale proceeds alike toward shoring up its preferred stack rather than adding to the treasury.
What to watch
- Whether the five-session ETF inflow streak extends into a sixth, or the deceleration from +$244.4M on August 5 to +$101.7M on August 7 marks the top of this leg.
- Whether VanEck's HODL, now three sessions negative, keeps fading, or whether its earlier positive run resumes.
- Whether Strategy returns to accumulation at its next filing, or extends its run of zero-purchase weeks — now six filings and counting since June 22.
- Whether the 60-session net flow (-$6,933.0M) begins to turn with this week's bounce, or this proves an isolated positive stretch inside a still-negative trend.
- Whether further preferred-dividend or STRC obligations draw on the USD Reserve, bitcoin sales, or both.
Track the flow data live on the flow pulse overview and ETF flow dashboards, and Strategy's full treasury and financing history on the MSTR breakdown. Flow and treasury figures throughout are read directly from bryptoflows' own API — ETF flows from Farside Investors, Strategy detail from SEC filings; the preferred-dividend and USD Reserve figures are sourced to the reporting linked above, retrieved August 8, 2026.