Bitcoin Reclaims $78,000 as US ETFs Log a Third Straight Day of Outflows

Bitcoin reclaimed the $78,000 level on Tuesday, November 4, even as the twelve U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds logged a third consecutive session of net redemptions. The funds shed $115.6 million on Monday, November 3, per Farside Investors data, bringing the three-session total to roughly $1.16 billion since October 30. Bitcoin nevertheless traded near $78,317, up about 1.8% over 24 hours, after Democrats secured control of both chambers of Congress in Tuesday’s midterm elections.

The redemptions began the session after the disclosure of the $6.3 billion Binance theft , which unsettled confidence in exchange custody. Since then the funds have returned $643.2 million on October 30, $398.6 million on November 2, and $115.6 million on November 3. The question the market is weighing is whether those redemptions mark a genuine retreat by institutional investors, or whether spot buyers are absorbing the selling faster than the fund wrappers can offload it.

Three Trading Sessions, $1.16 Billion Out the Door

The redemptions are concentrated in a single fund complex. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) accounted for $233.7 million of the October 30 outflow, $405.3 million on November 2, and $95.0 million on November 3. Across the three sessions IBIT lost about $734 million, or roughly 63% of the combined total, per Farside’s daily tables.

The rest of the cohort tells a more mixed story. Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) and Bitwise’s Bitcoin ETF (BITB) drew small inflows on November 3 of $6.8 million and $21.9 million respectively, while Grayscale’s Bitcoin Mini Trust (BTC) shed $52.6 million and Morgan Stanley’s MSBT added $3.3 million. The other five funds in the cohort — BTCO, EZBC, BRRR, HODL and BTCW — recorded zero net flow across all three sessions.

One detail stands out in the sequence: the outflows are decelerating. Each day has been smaller than the one before it — $643.2 million, then $398.6 million, then $115.6 million. That is the shape of a shock that is being worked off, not a panic that is building. Whether the pattern holds is one of the clearer signals to watch over the next sessions.

Ethereum funds are on a longer slide. Per Farside’s Ethereum table , the U.S. spot Ether ETFs have now posted seven consecutive sessions of net outflows from October 26 through November 3, totaling about $656 million. Monday’s $85.3 million outflow was the smallest of the three most recent days, after $155.7 million on October 30 and $139.7 million on November 2.

Why the Price Did Not Follow the Flows

If ETF redemptions translated one-for-one into spot selling, Bitcoin should have kept falling. It did not. Bitcoin traded near $78,317 at mid-morning UTC on November 4, up 1.8% in 24 hours with a market capitalization near $1.57 trillion, per CoinGecko . Ether rose about 2.4% to $2,319.

Three factors appear to explain the gap. The first is the midterm outcome: a Democratic sweep of the House and Senate removed a source of near-term political uncertainty and coincided with the recovery. The new majority does not take office until January 3, so the policy consequences remain months away and largely unspecified. The second is a flush of leveraged positions. Per CoinGlass , $461.8 million in positions were liquidated over the preceding 24 hours, with longs at 57.6% of the total — the kind of forced selling that clears weak hands rather than marking a new directional trend.

The third factor is scale. Monday’s $115.6 million outflow equals less than 0.4% of Bitcoin’s $31 billion in 24-hour spot volume. Spot buyers on exchanges and over-the-counter desks can absorb that size of selling without a sustained move lower. The data therefore suggest the ETF wrapper is one channel among several — large on some days, but modest relative to total turnover.

What ETF Redemptions Do Not Prove

The three-session streak does not establish that institutions have broadly turned bearish on Bitcoin. ETF flows capture only the fund wrapper; they miss direct spot purchases, over-the-counter trades, and corporate treasuries. Strategy, the largest corporate Bitcoin holder, was still disclosing purchases in early November, and a single issuer’s redemptions do not describe the market.

The concentration in IBIT also matters. One fund complex accounting for nearly two-thirds of the outflow is a narrower signal than a broad redemption across all twelve products. Several funds ended the three sessions flat or in positive territory, which is inconsistent with a coordinated institutional exit. Three sessions is also a short window: Farside’s own history shows a $635.6 million single-day outflow on October 22 and a $1.37 billion single-day inflow within the same month, so a three-day slide sits well inside this product’s normal volatility rather than proving a regime change.

For the causal claim that the outflows are dragging Bitcoin lower, the evidence is weaker still. The heaviest redemption day — October 30 — is also the day Bitcoin’s decline was already being attributed to the post-hack custody shock and a broad equities selloff. The available data do not establish that ETF redemptions, rather than those concurrent forces, drove the move. The recovery since then has come even as the redemptions continued, which points the other way.

Friday’s Jobs Report Is the Next Test

The next concrete signal arrives Friday, November 6, with the U.S. employment report. A strong reading would test the recovery thesis by keeping the Federal Reserve cautious on rate cuts, while a soft print could reinforce the risk-on tone that followed the election result.

For the ETF channel specifically, the test is simpler: whether the flows flip positive. If the funds return to net inflows while Bitcoin holds above $78,000, the three-day redemption streak will read as a post-hack overhang that has since cleared. If redemptions persist alongside a retest of the mid-$75,000s, the market will have to revisit the assumption that spot demand can keep absorbing institutional selling. The outflows that first appeared after the Binance hack have yet to reverse, and the next data print will show whether the recovery or the redemption streak is the more durable signal.