Outflows from spot Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. surged last week as investor sentiment took a hit from rising trade tensions driven by President Trump’s aggressive tariff plans.
According to SoSoValue data, the 12 spot Bitcoin ETFs saw $713.3 million pulled out, over 300% more than the $172.7 million outflows from the week before.
Every single day from April 7 to 11 saw money being pulled, continuing a streak that began on April 3. The biggest drop came on Tuesday, with $326.27 million in outflows, while Friday ended the week with just over $1 million leaving.
BlackRock’s IBIT took the hardest hit with $342.6 million in outflows, followed by Grayscale’s GBTC with $160.9 million and Fidelity’s FBTC with $74.6 million per Faside data. Other ETFs, like BITB, BTCO, ARKB, EZBC, BTCW, and HODL, also saw outflows ranging from about $11 million to $38 million.
The only ETF to buck the bearish trend was Grayscale’s mini Bitcoin Trust, which recorded $2.4 million in net inflows, while Valkyrie’s BRRR saw no flows during the week.
Meanwhile, Ethereum ETFs didn’t fare much better than their Bitcoin counterparts, with outflows jumping 65% to $82.47 million last week. It’s now the seventh straight week of Ethereum ETF withdrawals, adding up to more than $877 million in total.
The main driver behind all this seems to be the uncertainty around Trump’s new tariff plans. He originally announced a 10% flat tariff on all imports starting in April, with even higher rates for major trading partners.
Markets cooled off a bit on April 9, when he paused the tariff hikes for 75 allied countries. That relief didn’t last long. The U.S. then raised some tariffs on Chinese goods to as high as 145%, accusing China of unfair trade.
In response, China hit back with tariffs of up to 125% on U.S. goods and stopped exporting rare-earth minerals. This ramped up fears of a full-blown trade war and made investors nervous about riskier assets like Bitcoin.
At the time of writing, the overall crypto market was down around 2.1% in the past day. Despite this, Bitcoin has bounced from last week’s low of $74,773 to nearly $84,500 by Monday, April 14.
According to some analysts, Bitcoin (BTC) is on the verge of breaking out of its long downtrend. They note that the price is just hours away from making the first key move that could kick off a new uptrend phase.
