BlackRock Bitcoin Buying Rebounds as ETF Investors Sit 22% Underwater

BlackRock clients bought $273.2 million of Bitcoin over two days after selling $63.6 million earlier in the week. Those figures match BlackRock’s reported fund creations to the decimal.

The buying made BlackRock close to the entire US spot Bitcoin ETF market this week. It also arrived with the average fund dollar sitting deeply underwater.

BlackRock Was More Than the Whole Market This Week

The iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) took in a net $209.6 million across the four sessions from July 27 to July 30, according to Farside Investors. The full 13-fund complex took in $203.9 million. Every other fund combined therefore came out slightly negative.

The daily split shows the same concentration. IBIT supplied $183.38 million of the $233.13 million that arrived on July 30, or 79% of the total. That was the largest single-day inflow since July 6, SoSoValue records show.

Arkham’s on-chain tally reconciles exactly with those creations. IBIT redeemed $8.8 million and $54.8 million on July 27 and July 28, producing the $63.6 million of selling Arkham logged. Creations of $89.8 million and $183.4 million followed, matching its $273.2 million figure.

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The Average ETF Buyer Is Still Down 22%

Research firm Hedgeye published Bloomberg Intelligence data on July 28 showing how badly the typical fund buyer has fared since launch.

The average U.S. Bitcoin ETF buyer is now down -22%,” they wrote.

The underlying chart puts the gross cost basis of all US spot Bitcoin ETF purchases at $82,249. Measured against the $64,114 price it marks, that is a 22% shortfall.

Bitcoin (BTC) traded around $62,907 on Friday, down 2.96% over 24 hours. At that level the gap widens to roughly 24%.

The scale reads more clearly in dollars. Aggregate unrealized losses hit $16.33 billion on July 20. The same measure peaked at an $86.32 billion gain on October 6, 2025, the day Bitcoin set its $126,080 record.

Creations Track Client Demand, Not a House Bet

Flows into IBIT reflect share creations by authorized participants rather than proprietary positions taken by BlackRock. Rising demand forces the fund to buy Bitcoin. Redemptions force it to sell.

That mechanism cuts both ways, and IBIT has led in both directions. It absorbed $202.5 million and $212.2 million of outflows on July 23 and July 24, the two worst sessions of the month.

The longer arc is starker. IBIT holdings peaked near 823,000 BTC in mid-May, then fell by roughly 90,000 BTC through early July before flattening near 730,000.

BlackRock has commercial reasons to want that bleeding stopped. IBIT holds $47.86 billion, or 61% of the $78.76 billion across all US spot Bitcoin ETFs, and the firm issues formal Bitcoin allocation guidance of 1% to 2% of institutional portfolios.

Chief executive Larry Fink told CNBC on July 15 that the crypto leverage washout ended. Flow data has since moved his way, though not far. June drained $4.51 billion in the worst month on record since the funds launched in January 2024, and July has recovered $438 million of it.

Cumulative net inflows across the complex stand at $51.59 billion. IBIT alone has drawn $60.60 billion, a gap explained by Grayscale’s $27.42 billion of redemptions from GBTC. One issuer now accounts for all of the industry’s net growth, and its newest clients are buying at prices its earlier ones never saw.