US spot Bitcoin ETFs pulled in another $519 million of net redemptions on June 2, extending the longest outflow run since the funds launched and tipping a leveraged market into $1.86 billion of forced selling.
Bitcoin slid below $66,000 in early Wednesday trading and traded as low as $65,372 before rebounding above $67,000, capping a 6% one-day drop that has erased the price action of the last two months and pushed the world’s largest cryptocurrency 47% below its October all-time high.
BTC spot was changing hands near $66,787, off 2.8% on the day and down 11.7% over the past week, according to CoinGecko.
The drawdown landed on the same day US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds posted their longest withdrawal streak on record. The cohort gave up a net $519.19 million on June 2, extending consecutive daily outflows to 12 trading sessions, the deepest such run since the products launched in January 2024, SoSoValue data show.
The cascade then forced more than $1.86 billion in leveraged crypto positions to liquidate over 24 hours, Coinglass dashboard data show, with Bitcoin alone accounting for $896 million.
The latest market moves reverse the trade that defined the last 18 months. US spot ETFs were the marginal institutional buyer that lifted Bitcoin from $40,000 to a $126,080 peak. They are now the marginal seller, and the order has switched at a moment when the largest single corporate holder, Strategy, has just broken its four-year buy-and-hold streak.
The ETF Bid Has Paused
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trustthe biggest of the cohort, led the June 2 withdrawals with $308.64 million in net redemptions. Grayscale’s GBTC shed $83.51 million, Fidelity’s FBTC lost $45.14 million and Ark 21Shares’ ARKB gave up $16.67 million. Morgan Stanley’s MSBT was the only fund to take money in, recording $14.77 million of inflows.
Monday produced another $483.76 million of net outflows, also per SoSoValue, taking the two-day damage to roughly $1 billion.
The withdrawal tape sits beneath a broader retreat. Total crypto market capitalization fell to about $2.39 trillion on Wednesday, a 2.9% daily drop, with Bitcoin’s share holding at 55.87%, meaning the rest of the complex is bleeding harder. Ether dropped 5.3% to $1,866; Solana fell 5.4% to $74.54, CoinGecko shows.
Strategy, the corporate-treasury vehicle that holds 843,706 BTC worth about $56 billion at current spot, disclosed last week it had sold 32 BTC to fund a dividend distribution — its first sale of Bitcoin in nearly four years and a symbolic break from a position whose mark-to-market value has fallen roughly $50 billion from its October peak.
Separately, the Mt. Gox bankruptcy estate moved 10,306 BTC on Monday, reviving creditor-distribution concerns, and Iranian missile strikes on the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain stoked a broader risk-off bid in dollars and gold.
The Liquidation Cascade
Long positions accounted for roughly 88% of the $1.86 billion wipeout, Coinglass show, with about $1.66 billion of long notional flushed against just $200 million of shorts. Bitcoin futures took $896.4 million of liquidations, Ether $482.17 million and Solana $91.46 million, with the bulk concentrated in a single intraday window as BTC broke $66,000.
Open interest in Bitcoin perpetuals fell sharply through the move, a sign that the unwind cleared leverage rather than simply rotating it. On the options side, Derived data shows that downside hedging demand has pushed open interest into $50,000-strike puts, with dealers sitting on a negative-gamma zone between $68,000 and the mid-$50,000s, a setup that mechanically pulls dealer hedging into more selling on weakness.
Where the Damage Stops
BTC spot is still trading more than 50% above the level at which the spot ETFs first cleared their largest cumulative inflow milestone in early 2024, when the price sat near $42,000.
Stablecoins are still at near record-highs. Tether’s USDT still floats $187.5 billion and Circle’s USDC $76.1 billion, per DeFiLlamaboth within a fraction of recent highs. The institutional money that has left the ETF cohort has, so far, mostly been parked rather than spent.