Bitcoin and Ethereum Slide as $4.2 Billion Exits Crypto Spot ETFs

Bitcoin slid to $63,000 on June 4, its lowest price since February, in a stretch that cut more than 14% of the cryptocurrency’s value in one week and roughly 21% over four weeks. US-listed spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded 13 consecutive days of net redemptions over that period, pulling more than $4.2 billion from the funds in three weeks. Ethereum fell below $1,800 simultaneously, with neither asset finding buyers as US equity markets kept posting AI-driven gains.

Spot Bitcoin ETF assets under management, which peaked at $104 billion on the back of a six-week inflow streak, fell to $94 billion in 10 trading days. That contraction has no parallel in the 17 months since the funds launched.

Thirteen Days of Outflows

The 13-session redemption streak that CoinDesk reported as of June 4 is the longest on record for US spot Bitcoin ETFs since their January 2024 launch. It reversed a six-week inflow run that had carried cumulative net inflows to nearly $20 billion. According to Farside Investors’ daily Bitcoin ETF flow tracker, the worst single sessions came Thursday and Friday of the streak’s peak week, each delivering more than $700 million in redemptions, with each successive session amplifying the prior day’s negative momentum.

Grayscale Absorbed 35% of One Week’s Damage

Grayscale’s GBTC, the converted trust structure now running as the industry’s longest-standing Bitcoin ETF, took a disproportionate share of the worst week’s total. The fund accounted for roughly $1.2 billion of that week’s outflows, about 35% of the weekly total, despite holding less than 15% of aggregate US spot Bitcoin ETF assets. That gap traces to the structure itself: legacy holders who entered through the trust format before the January 2024 ETF conversion have been exiting at elevated rates when prices fall, because the conversion removed the liquidity premium that previously kept those positions in place. BlackRock’s IBIT, which holds the largest share of category assets, also posted significant dollar outflows, though proportionally more in line with its share of total assets.

Six Weeks of Inflows, Now Fully Reversed

The six-week inflow run preceding the break carried Bitcoin from around $52,000 in early 2026 to a peak of $74,500 in late May, a 43% move that left many institutional positions deep in profit. Coinfomania, analyzing the peak outflow week, described each subsequent session’s volume as “built on the prior day’s negative sentiment, creating a self-reinforcing cycle,” with Thursday and Friday of that week delivering $890 million and $710 million in single-session redemptions respectively. The mechanism is direct: redemptions push fund providers to sell underlying Bitcoin to meet exits, lower prices trigger more redemptions, and the cycle feeds itself.

Capital’s Route into AI

While crypto sold off, US equity markets gained. Record levels in AI and semiconductor stocks overlapped with the 13-day ETF streak, and the divergence drew clear comment from trading desks. Michael Rabkin, global head of business development at DV Chain, a crypto liquidity firm, told BNN Bloomberg on June 2 that investors had “rotated capital into AI and chip stocks, really siphoning attention and investment away from digital assets” as US equities hit record highs in the same weeks Bitcoin fell.

Whilst there is a long way to go, the absence of catalysts and the movement of liquidity into other tech sectors such as AI indicate we have further volatility ahead.

Paul Howard, senior director at Wincent, a liquidity provider, wrote that in a note cited by CoinDesk on June 4. The 10-year Treasury yield climbed 18 basis points to 4.82% in the days following the Federal Reserve’s June policy statement, per Coinfomania’s market analysis, and institutional portfolio managers holding a non-yielding asset like Bitcoin face a direct yield gap against both Treasury rates and AI equity returns.

Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management, a crypto asset manager, described conditions in a June 3 note as “brutal,” citing the Nasdaq-100’s roughly 43% year-over-year gain driven by AI, robotics and space-related equities as the competing narrative. Strategy’s executive chairman Michael Saylor framed the ETF outflow run on X on June 4 as “a capital rotation, not a Bitcoin impairment,” though even his characterization confirmed that the destination for the exiting capital is elsewhere.

Laser Digital’s derivatives trading desk put a finer point on the directionless quality of the selling in a June 1 note, describing the prior week’s crypto decline as occurring “without a clear catalyst,” leaving no specific event date on which to look for a reversal.

Capital rotation away from Bitcoin has been running in multiple directions for months. Oton Technology reported in May how early Bitcoin holders were moving toward privacy-focused alternatives like Zcash, with Digital Currency Group founder Barry Silbert arguing that up to 10% of Bitcoin capital could shift toward shielded assets. Rabkin’s AI rotation follows the same capital-exit logic at larger scale, crossing from digital assets into traditional equity.

Multiple Drivers Landed at Once

Four separate pressures converged in the same two-week window.

• Strategy’s first Bitcoin sale since 2022. The company, the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder, disclosed in Strategy’s SEC 8-K filings that it sold 32 BTC at approximately $77,135 each to fund dividend payments, generating about $2.5 million. That sum is less than 0.004% of the company’s roughly $60 billion Bitcoin treasury. Strategy had publicly maintained a “never sell” posture since 2020, and the disclosure broke that commitment in market perception. Strategy’s shares fell nearly 6%.
• A Federal Reserve language shift. The Fed’s June policy statement removed prior references to “progress toward the 2% inflation target,” and two voting members publicly suggested rate cuts anticipated for Q3 2026 could slip to 2027. Higher risk-free rates directly raise the opportunity cost of holding Bitcoin, which pays no yield, and institutional allocators ran that calculation and reduced exposure.
• Mt. Gox wallet activity. On June 2, Mt. Gox moved 10,422 bitcoin worth about $739 million to a newly generated wallet, its largest single transfer in months ahead of an October 31, 2026 creditor repayment deadline. The estate still controls roughly 34,504 BTC valued at about $2.43 billion. CryptoQuant, a blockchain analytics firm, noted that previous similar transfers had “not led to immediate selling pressure,” but the timing added to bearish sentiment on a day when the broader market was already under strain from ETF outflows and the Strategy news.
• Large-holder profit-taking. Institutional positions built in the $52,000-to-$58,000 range during the first quarter of 2026 were sitting on gains when Bitcoin touched $74,500 in late May. The rate shift gave those holders a macro reason to exit, and the prior 43% move from entry provided substantial realized gains to lock in.

Coinfomania’s analysis of the period described the combined exit as “rational profit-taking accelerated by a changing macro backdrop,” distinguishing the institutional behavior from panic liquidation.

Ethereum’s Separate Technical Breakdown

Ethereum fell below $2,000 on June 2 as stop-losses triggered across Bitstamp and Binance. The intraday low reached approximately $1,716 on Kraken, per NewsBTC’s hourly chart data, and by June 4, ETH was consolidating below $1,800 below the 100-hourly Simple Moving Average and all major exponential moving averages.

US spot Ethereum ETFs logged a net outflow of $401.62 million in May, the third-largest monthly redemption since those products launched in 2024, behind only November and December 2025, per Farside Investors’ Ethereum ETF flow data. The correlation between ETF flows and ETH’s monthly price has been unusually direct in 2026: March’s near-neutral outflows of negative $46 million coincided with a 7.07% monthly gain for ETH; April’s $355.98 million in net inflows produced a 7.38% gain; May’s reversal to deep outflows produced the breakdown, a pattern BeInCrypto described as showing “how important ETF flows are to the ETH price action.”

Technical indicators give an oversold reading without a reversal signal. CoinCodex’s data as of June 4 shows ETH’s relative strength index (RSI), a momentum oscillator where readings below 30 indicate oversold conditions, at 20.15. Of 34 tracked indicators, 30 pointed bearish and 4 bullish. Oversold RSI readings in sustained bear phases can persist for weeks before any reversal registers.

Historical seasonality adds to the headwinds. The average June return for Ethereum since 2016 is -6.74%, with a median of -5.65%, per BeInCrypto’s seasonal analysis of ETH across the last decade. Only three of the last 10 June months closed in the green.

Where Does the Price Floor Sit?

Analysts have concentrated Bitcoin’s near-term support around $60,000, the level flagged after the break below $65,000. Paul Howard at Wincent articulated the bear case in his June 4 client note: “BTC at $50k is a level some are starting to talk about as a bottom this year,” citing the absence of new catalysts and the ongoing AI liquidity shift as drivers.

Ethereum’s chart has more defined projections. BeInCrypto’s June analysis identified an inverted cup-and-handle pattern on the two-day chart: a close below $1,964 for two consecutive sessions would confirm the structure, with the measured move projecting a 21% drop to $1,545. The $1,800 Fibonacci level is the only material stop on that path.

Kaiko’s crypto market liquidity research found diminishing order book depth across major exchanges during the selloff, meaning smaller sell orders are moving price harder than they were earlier in the year. That structural thinning means the same dollar amount of daily ETF outflows produces wider price gaps in June than it would have in January.

The $10 billion removed from spot Bitcoin ETF assets since late May is now the baseline that any reversal in sentiment has to absorb.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment or financial advice. Cryptocurrency markets involve significant risk, and past performance is not indicative of future results. Price figures cited are accurate as of the time of publication. Readers should consult a qualified financial professional before making any investment decisions.