Bitcoin price fell more than 5.5% last week, from above $77,000 to around $72,600 on Thursday as risk sentiment weakened. The move extends a broad pullback from early May’s rise above $82,000, leaving the price of bitcoin trading around 6-7% lower each week as exits from growing ETF positions and US-Iran pressure prices.
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust recorded $527.84 million in net outflows on Wednesday, its second-largest one-day withdrawal since the fund’s inception in January 2024 — falling short of the all-time record by nearly $500,000. The figure sits broadly across the US bitcoin ETF sector, which collectively shed $733.43 million that day, the largest combined daily outflow since late January.
Besides the headline numbers, the context is important. IBIT has over $2 billion in year-to-date flows and has accumulated $64 billion in lifetime income since launch, placing it in the top 2% of all ETFs in cumulative flows. Wednesday’s withdrawal of $528 million represents less than 1% of that total.
The exit did not happen separately. Bitcoin price fell below the $73,000 level during Asian trading hours on Thursday, down 3.4% in 24 hours to $72,978. What happened at that time was a new round of US airstrikes on the Iranian military base near the Strait of Hormuz, which dominated the political landscape that the markets had started to discount.
As investors bailed on ETF shares, BlackRock and other issuers were forced to sell underlying bitcoin to offset those exits, feeding the price drop and the data out of the loop.
Alongside IBIT, Greyscale’s GBTC lost $104.76 million and Fidelity’s FBTC lost $60.30 million on the same day. Morgan Stanley’s MSBT was the only bitcoin ETF to post positive flows, pulling in $4.3 million, according to Bitcoin Magazine Pro data.
Large Bitcoin block trading
One factor that fed Wednesday’s output number was the transactions that occurred on Tuesday. One investor sold $1.29 billion worth of IBIT shares in a black-block exchange — a privately negotiated transaction designed to allow big players to move big without tipping off the broader market. The price of Bitcoin was around $78,000 at that time.
Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas flagged the trade, noting that it involved 29.2 million IBIT shares and helped push the total value of the bitcoin ETF on Tuesday to $4.4 billion, the highest since April 17.
A black pool sale is not the same as a full exit. Buyers absorb the other side of the transaction, so the fund itself does not see redemption. The actual net outflow of IBIT on Tuesday reached $ 192.44 million – large, but different from the trading title block. These two events together point to institutional players who reduce exposure to bitcoin, whether through direct redemptions or exits from the secondary market.
The emerging data shows a trend that has been building in May. The ETF’s year-to-date accumulation fell to 4,500 BTC, and May was down from the continued buying seen in March and April as net distributions.
Bitcoin’s price has fallen from more than $82,000 on May 6 to less than $73,000, and the ETF channel that drove most of the 2025 bull has spent the past few weeks pulling money in the opposite direction.
Bitcoin price reduction
JPMorgan added another layer to the picture on Wednesday, noting that pandemic-era “bullish trading” — the theory that bitcoin and gold act as a hedge against currency erosion — appears to be cooling off.
The bank suggested that institutional futures positions and ETF derivatives in both assets should reflect investor values on a potential US-Iran decision before it happens.
IBIT has experienced extended outflows over the course of this cycle without a permanent drawdown, with capital returning each time a major backlog is removed. Whether this episode follows that pattern depends on the trajectory of Middle East tensions and whether the rotation out of crypto stocks proves to be temporary or structural.
At the time of writing, the price of bitcoin is close to $72,800.
