Bitcoin Breaks $8.7K: Net Inflow from $10 Billion ETF Ends Winter?

According to Woofun AI, Sean Farrell, head of Fundstrat's digital assets department, officially announced that 'the cryptocurrency winter is over'. This judgment is based on Bitcoin's price breaking through the $86,000 mark and hitting a new high market performance since January. Compass Point analyst Ed Engel further added that the market is currently in the early stages of a new bull market, and institutional capital's renewed preference for spot cryptocurrency products is the core driving force.

The drastic reversal of capital flows forms the underlying logic of this round of the market. On Monday, the US Bitcoin Spot ETF recorded a net inflow of $998.9 million, driving the price of Bitcoin to touch $87,360 on Tuesday. According to data compiled by Woofun AI, BlackRock (BLK.US) IBIT (IBIT.US) has a net worth of about $68 billion, followed by Fidelity FBTC (FBTC.US) and Grayscale GBTC (GBTC.US) with about $13.9 billion and $11 billion respectively.

This strong inflow is in stark contrast to the previous outflow of around $450 million on September 15 (the worst performance since June). Net inflows in a single day on September 18 alone reached $433 million, with FBTC (FBTC.US) and IBIT (IBIT.US) being the main beneficiaries.

Signs of recovery have spread to the Ethereum circuit. On September 18, the Ethereum Spot ETF achieved a net inflow of approximately US$143.8 million, with BlackRock (BLK.US) iShares Ethereum Trust leading the performance. As of the same day, ETHA (ETHA.US) assets climbed to about $9.2 billion, while the size of the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust was about $5.1 billion, and the Fidelity Ethereum Fund also received attention. The financial dynamics of these products indicate that institutional demand is expanding from Bitcoin to other mainstream assets, verifying widespread improvements in market liquidity.

However, the purity of the upward momentum remains questionable. Nicolai Søndergaard, a senior research analyst at Nansen, pointed out that the recent market was driven by a combination of a recovery in ETF demand and large-scale shortfall, with about US$919 million of short positions being forcibly closed. If IBIT (IBIT.US), FBTC (FBTC.US), and ARKB (ARKB.US) can maintain a net inflow trend of nearly $1 billion, it is proof that demand is independent; otherwise, this is just a strong rebound triggered by bears rather than a sustainable trend.