A Blockstream executive made waves on social media Saturday with a striking comparison: US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have pulled in roughly the same amount of cumulative investor money as gold ETFs collected over their first 15 years — and Bitcoin did it in less than two.
The Numbers Behind The Claim
Fernando Nikolić, Blockstream’s director of marketing, posted the observation on X, adding that the milestone came during a period when Bitcoin had dropped 46% from its peak and spent several months trending downward.
His point was that institutional money kept flowing into Bitcoin products even as prices fell hard. The claim drew attention because gold ETFs had a significant head start in the market — more than a decade — before Bitcoin products even existed.
spot bitcoin ETFs matched 15 years of cumulative gold ETF inflows in under two years
gold had a fifteen year head start and bitcoin caught it in twenty months
absolute cinema
and this happened during a 46% drawdown btw
during five red months while most of your timeline… pic.twitter.com/TuK5E2WZsq
— Fernando Nikolić
(@basedlayer) March 8, 2026
The data backing the broader story comes from SoSoValue, which tracks daily and weekly flows into US spot crypto ETFs. According to that data, Bitcoin ETFs brought in around $568 million this week.
The prior week saw roughly $787 million come in. Back-to-back positive weeks like that haven’t happened since early October last year — a stretch of about five months during which money was consistently leaving these funds.
Before the recent stretch of inflows, the bleeding was significant. Reports indicate Bitcoin ETFs shed approximately $3.8 billion across five straight weeks of net withdrawals. The worst single week came around January 30, when investors pulled out close to $1.50 billion in one stretch.
Day-By-Day, The Picture Gets Messier
The weekly totals look clean. The daily breakdown does not. This week, Bitcoin ETFs took in $458 million on Monday, another $225 million on Tuesday, and a strong $462 million on Wednesday.
Then the direction flipped. Thursday brought $228 million in outflows, and Friday saw close to $350 million leave the funds. The week ended positive, but just barely held together in the final sessions.
Ether ETFs followed a similar pattern on a smaller scale. The funds recorded their second straight week of net inflows, collecting around $23.56 million after posting a little over $80 million the prior week.
That two-week run marks the first consecutive weekly gains for Ether products since early October. Before that, five uninterrupted weeks of withdrawals drained more than $1.38 billion from those funds, with the week ending January 23 alone accounting for roughly $611 million in redemptions.
A Rebound With Uneven Footing
Two positive weeks for both Bitcoin and Ether ETFs signal a shift, but the daily choppiness tells a more complicated story. Large inflows early in the week gave way to sizable redemptions by Thursday and Friday — a pattern that suggests some investors remain cautious even as fresh money enters.
Featured image from Online Casinos, chart from TradingView
