The week ending Friday was the strongest for US spot bitcoin funds since October 2025. Fidelity took $293 million, VanEck's HODL bled $16 million.
BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust absorbed $1.331 billion of net inflows into US spot bitcoin ETFs last week, roughly 69 per cent of the $1.92 billion the category attracted in aggregate and the fund's largest weekly haul since October 2025.
The $1.92 billion figure is the biggest weekly inflow the group has recorded in 2026. It comes barely three weeks after the same funds were on pace for their weakest month on record and looked at risk of a full-year outflow. That reversal has taken IBIT's cumulative net take to $62.43 billion and put the total net asset value of US spot bitcoin ETFs at $96.07 billion, with cumulative industry inflows of $53.71 billion since launch.
BlackRock's dominance of the flow is not new but the scale has widened. Fidelity's FBTC came second with $293 million of net inflows. VanEck's HODL, the smallest of the tier-one products by assets, bled $16.15 million. That distribution, one fund taking roughly 69 per cent and the rest fighting for scraps, has been the running story of the entire product category since March.
The single-day picture is starker. Spot bitcoin ETFs recorded $307 million of net inflows on Thursday, the fifth consecutive day of positive flow and the strongest single-day figure in weeks.
The trigger appears to have been rate expectations. Markets have spent August pricing in a lower path for the federal funds rate ahead of Kevin Warsh's first Jackson Hole speech as Fed chair on Friday. Bitcoin rose more than 21 per cent over the week and closed above $77,500, its strongest five-day performance since March 2024. Ether spot ETFs took another $697 million on the same week, with $184 million landing on Thursday alone.
The composition of the flow matters as much as the headline number. Fidelity's showing after months in IBIT's shadow suggests some of the money is coming from allocators who wanted a second name on the ledger rather than more IBIT. The concentration risk that had drawn commentary earlier in the year, with one fund holding the lion's share of a nine-fund category, has softened at the margin. It has not gone away.
The reversal from July is what warrants attention. In late July, IBIT was mid-way through an eight-week outflow streak and the wider ETF trade had settled into what looked like background flow. Five weeks later the same funds took in $1.9 billion in five sessions. The category still moves in step with expectations about rates and the dollar; it has not become inert.
For BlackRock the mechanical implication is straightforward. IBIT held 746,478 bitcoin at the beginning of the month and has continued to add on net inflow days. The fund remains the fastest asset-gathering ETF in the industry's history, a distinction it has held since it took the crypto product category past the total AUM of the incumbent gold ETFs at the end of 2024. This week extends that lead further.
What the week does not settle is the demand question the industry has been circling since spring. Concentrated purchases arriving in the two sessions before Jackson Hole, the majority through IBIT, are consistent with allocator positioning ahead of a rate signal. Whether they persist into September depends on what Warsh says on Friday and on the PCE inflation print due the same week. For now, the funds have written their best week of the year and IBIT has written most of it.
