Bitcoin fell for a fifth straight day on Thursday, sliding as low as $61,322 before trimming losses, as nearly $4.4 billion drained from US-listed Bitcoin ETFs across 13 sessions and Strategy Inc. reported a rare sale of 32 Bitcoin this week.
The outflows marked a record-long streak for US-listed Bitcoin ETFs, wiping out almost $4 billion of bullish bets since the start of the week and sending Bitcoin to a four-month low close to the early-February support area around $60,000. On Thursday morning the token was trading nearer $63,500, while Ether slipped to its weakest level since April 2025, trading around $1,780 at 8:40 a.m.
The numbers underline how ETF flows have become the dominant source of demand for Bitcoin since their launch in early 2024. What had been a steady pipeline of institutional buying flipped this month into a sustained run of withdrawals — a reversal that coincided with a wider rotation inside markets away from Bitcoin and toward other pockets of risk and liquidity.
That rotation is visible in two awkward facts for bulls: technology stocks are hitting record highs even as Bitcoin retreats, and the corporate buyer whose purchases have been treated as a backstop only sold a tiny slice of its holdings. Strategy’s 32-Bitcoin sale this week was its first since December 2022 and sits against a reported reserve of about $53 billion — a sale measured in dozens of coins, not billions of dollars.
The mismatch has produced unease. Traders noted that Bitcoin’s weakness is coming at the same time AI and other tech names lead gains for the broader market, and within crypto attention has shifted toward stablecoins and perpetual futures that once might have funneled flows into Bitcoin. Some questioned whether inflows would instead rotate into altcoins; traders specifically debated moves into XRP and other non-Bitcoin tokens as potential recipients of fresh buying.
Market participants have good reason to be cautious: Bitcoin has now posted its longest losing streak since August and has lost roughly half its value since topping out above $126,000 last October. The market also flashed a comparable drawdown during a six-day stretch of losses that ended Aug. 2 last year, a reminder that multi-day pullbacks aren’t unprecedented — but that depth and persistence can surprise.
Geoffrey Kendrick summed up the tone on the trading desk, saying the week had been painful for crypto and that he expects any buying that comes after the selling to be more forceful than what preceded it. Strategy’s history is relevant here: after selling in December 2022 it later bought more tokens than it had sold, showing the firm will act on both sides of the market.
The immediate market question is clear: Strategy typically announces purchases on Monday, but the size and timing of any buying are unknown. Whether a Monday announcement will be large enough to absorb the ETF outflows and arrest Bitcoin’s slide is the most consequential unanswered point for traders heading into next week.
