ETF flows: ether took $307.7m, and 82% of its fund is still deposits

Across the last three settled sessions American spot ether funds took $307.7 million while bitcoin funds gave up $135.8 million, SoSoValue data shows. Monday broke bitcoin's outflow run with $160.0 million, and it was not enough to turn the window positive.

“Issuers are throwing a lot of product at the wall.”

— James Seyffart, Bloomberg Intelligence, quoted by The Block

James Seyffart, Bloomberg Intelligence, on the 126 crypto ETP filings still pending

ETF flows over 72 hours

Session by session:

• 10 September: bitcoin funds lost $282.6 million, ether funds lost $29.8 million.
• 11 September: bitcoin lost $13.3 million, ether took $216.4 million.
• 14 September: bitcoin took $160.0 million, ether took $121.0 million.

Measure each number against the fund it moved through and the difference gets larger, not smaller. Bitcoin's $135.8 million outflow is 0.136% of the $100.09 billion those funds hold. Ether's $307.7 million inflow is 1.874% of its $16.42 billion. Relative to size, the ether move is 13.8 times the bitcoin one, and the ether complex is only 16.4% as large.

Prices agreed with the flows over the same window. Bitcoin opened 10 September at $78,306 and closed Monday at $78,189, a loss of 0.15%. Ether went from $2,468 to $2,516, a gain of 1.93%. Buyers went where the number was green, which is the least surprising sentence in this piece and worth stating because the reverse gets claimed so often.

One fund did most of the ether work. BlackRock's iShares Ethereum Trust supplied $148.8 million of Friday's $216.4 million, or 68.8%. A single issuer carrying two thirds of the best day is a thinner bid than the headline total suggests.

What the daily tables hide

Now the part the daily numbers hide. American bitcoin funds hold $100.09 billion against $55.34 billion of cumulative net inflow, so 45% of what sits there is appreciation, worth $44.75 billion. Ether funds hold $16.42 billion against $13.51 billion contributed, so 82% of the fund is still the money people put in and only $2.91 billion is gain.

That gap says something the flow tables do not. The bitcoin vehicle has been running long enough, and up enough, to have made its holders more than they deposited in the years since launch. The ether vehicle is still mostly a deposit box. Anyone calling this week a rotation into ether is describing new money arriving, not value already created, and the two get confused constantly. We saw the same distinction inside BitMine's share price last week.

Into the rate decision

Both complexes now face a rate decision on Wednesday at 18:00 UTC with better than 87% priced for the first rise since 2023. American bitcoin funds hold 1,265,397 coins, or 6.30% of supply, and ether funds hold 6,388,325, or 5.23%. The four outflow days these three sessions interrupted ended a three-week inflow streak, and we measured yesterday that bitcoin now moves less on Fed days than it did a year ago.

Informational material, not investment advice. Flow data covers settled sessions only, and Tuesday's numbers were not published when we measured.