BlackRock Triggers Bitcoin Sell-Offs With Half A Billion Dollars Dumped

The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, has notably been on a Bitcoin selling spree throughout this week, triggering a wave of sell-offs in the process. These sales have occurred due to the outflows that the asset manager has witnessed from its BTC ETF. 

Arkham data shows that BlackRock has offloaded around $500 million in Bitcoin this week, with transfers to Coinbase, a move that indicates a move to sell these coins. The asset manager has sold these coins following outflows from its iShares Bitcoin ETF, which was the norm throughout this week.

SoSo Value data shows that BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF first recorded a daily net outflow of $68.72 million on August 18. The fund then further saw net outflows of $220 million, $127.49 million, and $198.81 million on August 20, 21, and 22, respectively. Notably, the iShares Bitcoin ETF has accounted for most of the outflows, with the BTC ETFs as a group currently on a six-day streak of consecutive net outflows. 

These Bitcoin ETFs have seen total net outflows of almost $1.2 billion since August 15. Meanwhile, in just this week alone, over $1.1 billion has left these funds, sparking a bearish sentiment for the BTC price. Given BlackRock’s position as a major player in the Bitcoin ecosystem, outflows from its fund had sparked a wave of sell-offs. This led to a massive decline for the flagship crypto earlier in the week. 

The Bitcoin price had dropped to as low as $112,000 this week as BlackRock and other BTC investors took profit on their investments. This followed the flagship crypto’s rally to a new all-time high (ATH) of $124,000 last week. However, BTC has now sharply rebounded on the back of Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole speech, in which he indicated that a rate cut might happen in September. 

Notably, Powell’s speech was enough to spark fresh inflows into the Bitcoin ETFs on August 22, with BlackRock the only fund manager that recorded a net outflow on the day. Further data from SoSo Value shows that Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest recorded a daily inflow of $65.47 million, the most among the issuers on the day. 

Meanwhile, Fidelity, Van Eck, Franklin Templeton, Bitwise, and Grayscale recorded inflows of $50.88 million, $26.41 million, $13.51 million, $12.70 million, and $6.42 million, respectively. However, BlackRock recorded an outflow of $198.81 million, which led to a daily net outflow of $23.15 million for the funds as a group. With the Bitcoin price rebounding, these funds, including BlackRock’s IBIT, could return to witnessing significant daily inflows from next week.

At the time of writing, the Bitcoin price is trading at around $115,900, up over 2% in the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.