(Bloomberg) - Bitcoin’s Wall Street embrace was supposed to bring stability. Instead, it created a new vulnerability: dependence on American money that is now in retreat.
Since Oct. 10, roughly $8.5 billion has flowed out of US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. Futures exposure on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange has fallen by about two-thirds from its late-2024 peak to roughly $8 billion. Prices on Coinbase, the venue favored by many American institutions, have persistently traded at a discount to offshore exchange Binance — a signal of sustained US selling. Bitcoin has fallen more than 40% even as stocks and precious metals have found buyers.
That reversal carries unusual weight because of how the market changed. For most of its history, Bitcoin’s price was set on offshore exchanges by retail traders. Over the past two years, spot ETFs funneled billions through US vehicles, the CME became the dominant futures venue, and pension funds and hedge funds displaced individual buyers. American retail and institutional capital became the marginal price-setter.
When that capital was expanding, Bitcoin surged to a record on Oct. 6. Now it’s stalling — and there is no obvious catalyst to restart it. The original cryptocurrency was little changed at around $67,500 on Wednesday.
The core problem is simple: the institutional thesis broke. Investors who bought Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation, currency debasement, or equity market stress have watched it fall alongside — and sometimes faster than — the risks it was supposed to offset. Those who treated it as a momentum trade have rotated into assets that are actually moving from global stocks to gold.
The unwinding of that crypto trade has left the market thinner than it appears. Demand for borrowed exposure on the CME “hasn’t been this muted since the pre-ETF run-up of mid-2023,” said David Lawant, head of research at Anchorage Digital. Less leverage means fewer forced buyers when prices rise — and fewer natural absorbers when selling builds.
Part of the institutional wave was also more mechanical than it appeared. Hedge funds were running basis trades — buying spot Bitcoin while selling futures contracts at a premium, capturing the spread as yield. The strategy required no view on where prices were headed, only that the return exceeded what was available elsewhere.
For most of 2025, it did. When that spread compressed below Treasury yields after Oct. 10, the trade lost its rationale and those flows stopped. That represents one element of the demand picture, though most of the ETF reversal appears driven by declining appetite for Bitcoin as an asset rather than the economics of any single arbitrage strategy.
“That capital has no reason to stay,” said Bohumil Vosalik, chief investment officer at 319 Capital. Until genuine spot demand returns, he added, “every bounce risks becoming a sell-to-even zone rather than a foundation for recovery.” The Coinbase premium — negative for most of 2026 — suggests that demand has yet to materialize.
Bitcoin’s integration with US finance has brought real advantages — deeper liquidity and the institutional legitimacy the asset had long lacked. For now, though, the bid is in retreat and the market has lost its ability to respond to good news.
The deeper problem is structural. Institutionalization did not eliminate volatility. It reallocated it. The same products that brought Wall Street into Bitcoin — ETFs, yield-generating overlays, options strategies — were designed to smooth returns in stable conditions. They do. But they also concentrate risk in ways that only become visible when conditions shift.
Structured products that generate yield by selling options suppress price swings in calm markets, then amplify them when a real catalyst hits. Many ETF investors are also sitting below their average cost basis, which means bounces get sold by holders looking simply to break even — capping advances that in earlier cycles might have fed on momentum.
“The growing embrace of products like BlackRock’s IBIT is creating localized stabilization in Bitcoin when prices trade in a range,” said Spencer Hallarn, global head of OTC trading at GSR. But when a real catalyst hits, “those same structures can actually exaggerate the move. In particular, yield-generating products that systematically sell options suppress volatility, until they amplify it.”
The result is a market that has lost its ability to respond to good news. When BlackRock Inc. announced a product tied to Uniswap, the token briefly rallied before sliding back. In prior cycles, similar headlines often triggered extended runs. Now enthusiasm fades before it builds.
“The market structure really broke down on October 10th,” said Zach Lindquist, managing partner at Pure Crypto. “We’ve never seen this steady and severity of a drawdown even in 2018 and 2022.”
By Sidhartha Shukla
