ETF Flow Focus · Published

Bitcoin ETF Inflows Ex-BlackRock Turn Positive: +$47M

Are bitcoin ETF inflows still a BlackRock monopoly?

Less so than a week ago, and the crossover happened on Friday. Bitcoin ETF inflows across the eleven US spot funds that are not BlackRock's IBIT now total +$47.1M over the trailing 60 sessions — the first positive reading on that measure since May 14, ending a run of 77 consecutive negative sessions. The category as a whole sits at +$2,076.9M over the same 60 sessions, of which IBIT accounts for +$2,029.8M. BlackRock still supplies almost all of the net demand. What changed is that the other eleven products have stopped subtracting from it.

That is a narrow line to cross and it deserves to be described narrowly. Forty-seven million dollars over three months is a rounding error against a category that has taken in $55.69B since inception. It is not evidence of a broad institutional bid. It is evidence that the drag which has defined 2026 — GBTC redemptions, Fidelity outflows, and half the shelf sitting flat — has finally been offset rather than merely outrun.

The line that broke: 77 negative sessions, then +$47.1M

Last Monday's flow article put this measure at -$344.3M and said plainly that it "did not cross zero last week, and it is not close to crossing." Four sessions later it crossed. The path there: -$289.0M on August 31, -$212.3M on September 1, -$368.1M on September 2, -$75.5M after September 3's outsized session, and +$47.1M on September 4.

Two things did the work, and only one of them is demand. September 3's +$730.8M session — the category's largest since January — contributed $276.8M outside IBIT, the single biggest non-BlackRock day in the window. The rest is arithmetic: weak sessions from June kept rolling out of the back of the 60-session window faster than new weakness arrived.

Historical context matters more than the crossing itself. Of the 622 rolling 60-session windows in bryptoflows' record, only 185 have had the ex-IBIT figure positive — roughly 30%. A positive reading here is not the category's normal state; it is a minority condition that appears in strong stretches and vanishes in ordinary ones. At +$47.1M the reading is barely inside that minority, and a single $50M outflow day at any of the eleven funds would push it back out.

Fidelity's $411M swing is the week's real rotation

The aggregate number is on every crypto site by Monday morning. The issuer split is not, and it is where the last month actually differs from the one before it.

Compare the trailing 20 sessions (August 10 to September 4) against the 20 before them (July 13 to August 7), product by product:

Fidelity is the swing factor. FBTC went from the shelf's second-largest detractor, behind only GBTC, to the category's second-largest contributor, and its own 20-session rolling total has now been positive for 15 consecutive sessions. Against IBIT's scale that is small, but Fidelity's fund is the one that most often trades as the retail-and-advisor complement to BlackRock's, and it spent most of the summer redeeming. Its reversal is the largest single change in the issuer ledger outside BlackRock, whose own block grew by nearly $2.0B.

VanEck's HODL moves the other way and is the clearest counter-example: it has deepened its outflow in each of the last three 20-session blocks. Not everything is rotating in.

Three 20-session blocks: -$2.28B, +$913M, +$3.44B

Stacked end to end, the last three months of bitcoin ETF net flow read as a clean three-step recovery:

The temptation is to call the current block exceptional. It is not, quite. Measured against all 662 rolling 20-session windows in the record, +$3,443.8M ranks in the 71.5th percentile — a strong stretch, comfortably above average, and nowhere near a record. The last time the measure read higher was the window ending May 6 at +$3,643.6M, four months ago. This is a good month by the category's standards, not an extraordinary one, and articles that describe it as a stampede are overselling.

What has genuinely improved is concentration. IBIT supplied 97.4% of the middle block's net total and 83.7% of the current one. On gross activity — every product's flow measured by absolute size — IBIT accounted for 60.6% of the last 20 sessions. Both are high. Both are lower than they were.

The daily rolling averages bryptoflows tracks tell the same story with a caution attached: +$197.3M a day over five sessions, +$191.1M over ten, +$172.2M over twenty, and only +$34.6M over sixty. The short windows all sit above the long one, which is what an accelerating trend looks like — but the 60-session average being an order of magnitude smaller is the reminder that most of this quarter was flat to negative.

Grayscale has been net positive for 13 straight windows

The most under-reported line in the data belongs to the issuer everyone writes off. Grayscale's two vehicles combined — legacy GBTC plus the cheaper BTC mini trust — have a trailing 20-session net flow of +$90.0M. That combined measure has now been positive for 13 consecutive sessions, having turned with the window ending August 19.

The rarity is the point. Across 662 rolling 20-session windows since January 2024, Grayscale's combined flow has been positive in just 87 of them — about 13%. Life-to-date the issuer is still -$24,729.3M, a -44.4% drag on the category's cumulative total, and GBTC alone remains -$27,653.3M. The recent stretch does not dent those numbers. It does mean the single largest structural headwind on bitcoin ETF outflows has been, for the past month, slightly a tailwind instead.

Beneath the issuer line the split is unchanged in character from what this column described last week: GBTC -$192.7M against the mini trust +$282.7M over the same 20 sessions. The dataset shows two funds at one issuer moving in opposite directions. It cannot show that they are the same dollars, and no honest reading of it claims otherwise.

Four funds have gone quiet enough to notice

Breadth is improving on one measure and stagnant on another, and the distinction is worth being precise about. The average number of products posting a positive session has risen across the three blocks — 2.80, then 3.40, then 3.80 out of twelve. That is genuine widening. But the average number of products reporting exactly zero flow has held around 6.5 to 7.0 per session throughout.

Over the last 60 sessions:

Four of twelve products are, in flow terms, effectively dormant. Friday made the point vividly: of the twelve funds, ten printed exactly zero and only IBIT (+$117.4M) and FBTC (+$57.2M) moved at all, giving the session a product concentration of 0.559 against 0.083 for an even split. External coverage read the same session as a 76% drop in inflows with only BlackRock and Fidelity attracting fresh money, which matches bryptoflows' own figures exactly.

That single-day narrowness is also why bryptoflows' institutional support score now reads 42.9 and "Moderate accumulation," down from the 55.2 Friday's signal piece reported. The drop is not new selling. Two of the eight components — breadth and concentration — are measured on the latest session alone, and Friday's two-fund session scored -66.7 on breadth. Flow momentum, measured over 20 sessions, actually reads 71.6.

This week has four sessions, and the roll-off math is mixed

Two forward-looking facts shape the week that opens today, and neither appears in any weekend recap.

First, there is no flow print today. Monday September 7 is Labor Day and US markets are closed, reopening Tuesday. This is a four-session week, so every weekly total published on Saturday will be compared against five-session weeks unless the comparison is made carefully.

Second, some of the trend windows carry a mechanical tailwind and some do not, which is worth separating before Saturday's numbers land. Four sessions in means four sessions out. The four due to roll off the trailing 20-session window — August 10 through August 13 — sum to -$329.0M, so if the week ahead nets exactly zero the 20-session total still *rises* from +$3,443.8M to roughly +$3,773M. It would take about -$82M a session, four sessions running, to hold that figure merely flat.

The ex-IBIT measure has the strongest tailwind of all. The four sessions rolling out of its 60-session window sum to -$162.0M, which means a zero-flow week would lift the reading from +$47.1M to roughly +$209M without a dollar of new demand outside BlackRock.

The 60-session window for the category as a whole is the exception. Its four expiring sessions sum to +$8.8M, so a flat week would nudge that measure slightly *down*, from +$2,076.9M to about +$2,068M. The easy comparisons in that window have already been banked.

The practical implication is that two of the three headline trend measures will likely improve this week even on mediocre demand, and that improvement should not be read as new buying.

What would have to happen to break the pattern

The pattern here is: IBIT supplies the bulk, the rest of the shelf has stopped bleeding, and the trend windows are grinding higher. Three things would break it.

IBIT itself turning. The fund is on a three-session positive streak and has posted 430 positive sessions against 160 negative across 665 reported days. But it printed -$201.2M as recently as September 1, and at 83.7% of the current block there is no other product with the size to absorb a sustained IBIT reversal.

The ex-IBIT line falling back under zero. At +$47.1M the buffer is one bad session at one fund. Watch HODL and GBTC in particular — the two products still reliably negative.

Price. Bitcoin held near $79,900 through Sunday after failing to hold above $80,000, with US CPI ahead. bryptoflows' own price-confirmation component puts the 20-session return at +22.7%, and this category's flows have historically followed price rather than led it. A drawdown would test whether the last month's inflows were conviction or momentum.

What these numbers cannot tell you

They cannot tell you who is buying. Farside's daily creation-and-redemption data, which is what every figure above is computed from, shows dollars entering and leaving each fund. It does not identify advisors, hedge funds, or basis traders, and a large share of IBIT's flow may be delta-hedged rather than directional.

They cannot separate rotation from new money. When GBTC redeems and the mini trust creates on the same day, the flow file shows two independent numbers.

They cannot confirm today. Every figure here is current through the September 4 close, which bryptoflows' source check marks as delayed at roughly three and a half days old — normal for a Monday after a long weekend, since Farside publishes on trading days only. The bitcoin candles dataset is currently reporting as unavailable, so the only price figures used above come from bryptoflows' own live feed (the 20-session return) and an external tracker, marked as such.

Track the issuer split live on the ETF flow dashboard, the category pace on the flow pulse overview, and the composite read on the institutional signal page. Saturday's full weekly recap covers the completed reporting week in detail. Flow and attribution figures are read directly from bryptoflows' own API, sourced from Farside Investors; news claims are linked to the reports retrieved on September 7, 2026.