Bitcoin’s price has fallen more than 5.5% in the past week, falling from a high of $77,000 to $72,600 on Thursday as risk sentiment weakened. The move adds to the steepest decline since May’s early rally above $82,000, leaving bitcoin trading near 6-7% lower week-to-week as ETF gains and the cost of the US-Iran crisis escalate.
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust recorded $527.84 million in outflows on Wednesday, its second one-day drawdown since the fund was launched in January 2024 – short of the all-time record by nearly $500,000. The figure comes on top of the biggest exodus for US bitcoin ETFs, which collectively lost $733.43 million on the day, the largest daily total since late January.
Despite the number of titles, the story is important. The value of IBIT leftovers it has raised more than $2 billion in annual turnover and has raised $64 billion in lifetime total assets since its inception, placing it in the top 2% of all ETFs by volume. Wednesday’s $528 million draw represents less than 1% of that total.
The exit did not happen on its own. The price of Bitcoin fell below the $73,000 level during Asian trading on Thursday, down 3.4% in 24 hours to $72,978. Immediate help it was a new round of US airstrikes on Iranian military bases near the Strait of Hormuz, triggering a risk that markets began to moderate.
As investors bought back ETF shares, BlackRock and other issuers were forced to sell bitcoin to offset the outflows, feeding the falling price and data out of the loop.
Along with IBIT, Grayscale’s GBTC shed $104.76 million and Fidelity’s FBTC shed $60.30 million on the same day. Morgan Stanley’s MSBT was the only bitcoin ETF to post positive returns, pulling in $4.3 million, according to Bitcoin Magazine Pro data.
The biggest Bitcoin block sale
One thing that fed the number of exits on Wednesday was the activity that took place on Tuesday. One trader sold 1.29 billion shares of IBIT in a dark trade – a privately negotiated transaction designed to allow major players to make moves to expand without undermining the market. The price of Bitcoin was around $78,000 at the time.
Bloomberg ETF chief analyst Eric Balchunas known trading, and identified 29.2 million IBIT shares and helped push the total bitcoin ETF volume on Tuesday to $4.4 billion, the highest since April 17.
Selling a black pool is not the same as going online. Buyers take a portion of the transaction, so the fund itself does not see redemptions. The actual outflow of IBIT on Tuesday reached $192.44 million – large, but different from the block trading title. These two events together show players reducing exposure to bitcoin, either through direct redemptions or secondary exits from the market.
Lacie Zhang, Research Analyst at Bitget Wallet, said Bitcoin Magazine that the reported $1.3 billion IBIT block sale showed “market obsession without confusion,” Showing how the ETF structure has “changed Bitcoin’s liquidity profile” and routing large transactions through institutional channels and not causing a visible risk.
He added that the ongoing outflows signaled a “period of institutional cooling,” with Bitcoin rallying at $74K–$79K as “Wall Street’s faucets went into a frenzy,” while a move above $80K would require future recovery.
Outbound data shows trends through May. The ETF’s volume for the rest of the year dropped to around 4,500 BTC, and May moved away from the steady buying seen in March and April to distribution.
The price of Bitcoin he has fallen from a high of $82,000 on May 6 to a low of $73,000, and the ETF strategy that drove most of the 2025 bulls has spent the past few weeks pulling money elsewhere.
Bitcoin price drop
JPMorgan he added another part of the picture on Wednesday, I realize that the period of the pandemic “down trade” – the idea that bitcoin and gold are like hedges against the erosion of money – seems to be cooling down.
The bank said that the future of the institutions and the exit of the ETF in both of these products shows the prices of the investors in the idea that it will happen before the US-Iran.
IBIT has been dealing with long-term oversaturation during this period without any permanent adjustment, and the money returns every time the macro withdrawal occurs. Whether this event follows suit depends on the current state of the Middle East conflict and whether the crypto revolution in the business world is temporary or permanent.
At the time of writing, the price of bitcoin is around $72,800.
