bitcoin Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have seen nearly $5.75 billion in outflows since mid-May, fueling speculation that institutional investors are pulling money out of cryptocurrencies to prepare for SpaceX’s long-awaited IPO.
The selling pressure drove Bitcoin to a 2026 low below $60,000 in the first week of June, more than 50% below its all-time high of nearly $125,000 last October. One of the prevailing narratives around the selloff is a rotation of capital away from cryptocurrencies to prepare for a series of highly anticipated initial public offerings (IPOs) starting with SpaceX (SPCX) on Friday.
Fabian Dori, chief investment officer at Swiss digital asset bank Sygnum, is not convinced.
“ETF outflows are real,” Dori said in an interview with CoinDesk. “But the data doesn’t really support the hypothesis that Bitcoin would be bleeding because of the SpaceX IPO.”
If investors were systematically selling bitcoin to raise cash for IPO allocations, exchange balances would likely show unusual patterns of outflows and the market capitalization of stablecoins would likely decline as capital flowed out of the crypto ecosystem, he argues. Neither seems to be happening.
Currency flows remain generally normal, while the supply of stablecoins has seen a minor contraction. The more speculative corners of the digital asset market also continue to attract capital. Products linked to higher-risk cryptoassets continue to accumulate inflows, something Dori said would be unlikely if investors abandoned this asset class entirely.
Perhaps the strongest argument against the IPO rotation theory comes from the derivatives markets.
Dori noted a decline in CME bitcoin futures open interest that coincided with ETF redemptions. That relationship suggests that a significant portion of capital outflows may be related to the liquidation of cash-and-carry arbitrage trades rather than investors reallocating toward equity offerings.
A cash-and-carry trade is a popular institutional arbitrage strategy that seeks to profit from the gap between bitcoin’s spot price and futures prices. Investors buy bitcoins spot, often through an ETF, and at the same time sell bitcoin futures contracts. As long as futures trade at a premium to spot prices, the investor can earn a relatively low risk return when contracts converge at expiration.
When that premium reduces or financing conditions become less attractive, traders unwind the position by selling their spot exposure and closing their short futures positions. That process can lead to outflows from ETFs even when investors are not turning bearish on bitcoin itself. Instead, the arbitrage opportunity has simply become less profitable.
“Open interest and funding rates moved together very positively over the same period,” Dori said. “This points to a significant portion of ETF flows being associated with the reversal of funding rate carry-trade arbitrage.”
Read more: It’s not just about bitcoin ETFs. Corporate BTC purchases have also dried up
