Bitcoin dropped to roughly $79,400 after spot ETFs lost $635 million Wednesday, the largest single-day outflow since January, even as long-term holders absorbed a record 4 million BTC.
Posted May 14, 2026 at 6:03 am EST.
Bitcoin slipped to roughly $79,400 Thursday morning, down more than 2% over 24 hours, after U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs shed $635 million on Wednesday, the largest single-day net outflow since January 29, according to SoSoValue data.
The bleeding has been consistent, data shows. Over the past five trading days, the 11 U.S.-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs have lost roughly $1.26 billion, dragging cumulative net inflows since the funds’ January 2024 launch down to $58.5 billion from $59.76 billion a week earlier. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) alone accounted for $284.69 million of Wednesday’s outflows. The pullback follows two strong months: spot Bitcoin ETFs pulled in roughly $3.29 billion through March and April combined.
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Bitcoin’s rally has stalled at the 200-day simple moving average near $82,000, with renewed U.S. inflation concerns weighing on risk assets. “A persistently hot CPI, an incoming Fed under Warsh that markets read as more hawkish, or another oil shock can compress Bitcoin even with positive net flows,” Adam Haeems, head of asset management at Tesseract Group, told CoinDesk.
Underneath the daily flow data, the long-term picture has been moving the other direction. Long-term holders, the wallets that BitGo classifies as “conviction buyers,” now control a record 4 million BTC, worth roughly $320 billion at current prices, according to data cited by Bitfinex on Wednesday. That figure represents a 300% increase since the end of 2025, and includes corporate treasury accumulation led by Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), which now holds 818,869 BTC acquired for nearly $62 billion, sitting on roughly $4.6 billion in unrealized gains.
The result is a tighter float. CEX.IO research cited by CoinDesk found that nearly 70% of recent buyers’ supply is now in profit, a metric that has historically served as a psychological buffer against panic selling. “The more useful question is not whether the markup leg continues, but whether macro conditions stay loose enough for the flows to do their work,” Haeems said. Heading into the new Fed regime, that question gets the next answer at the June 16-17 FOMC meeting, Warsh’s first.
