Over $1B Exits Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs as XRP Launch Grabs Attention

Crypto ETF flows snapped hard into a new regime: capital left the benchmarks while novelty drew the gaze. More than $1.1 billion exited spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs on Thursday, even as a newly launched XRP fund posted 2025’s biggest daily net inflows and the strongest first-day trading volume of any ETF this year.

Here’s the tension worth focusing on: attention liquidity. In crypto, flows often chase what’s new rather than what’s core, and ETF microstructure can magnify that behavior.

- Outflows from the 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs totaled roughly $867 million, the second-largest daily bleed in their 22-month history and the worst since February, per Farside Investors. - Nine spot ETH funds shed another $260 million. - The macro tape was fragile: Bitcoin slipped below $98,500 for the first time in six months—about 20% off its early-October high—and later dipped under $97,000 Friday morning, according to CoinGecko. Ethereum and Solana sank to four- and five-month lows as risk assets, including tech stocks, faced pressure amid a shaky U.S. economic and political backdrop.

The selling concentrated in the flagships. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT)—the largest spot BTC vehicle with over $80 billion in AUM—saw more than $250 million in net outflows. Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) lost over $119 million. Interest has softened for weeks: IBIT has leaked over $1 billion across the last 13 trading days, while FBTC is down more than $681 million over the same stretch.

At the same time, Canary Capital’s spot XRP ETF (ticker XRPC) arrived to heavy demand. It set a 2025 record for daily net inflows and printed $58 million in day-one trading volume—best among roughly 900 ETFs launched this year—barely edging the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (BSOL) at $57 million. Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas had penciled in around $17 million for XRPC; it surpassed that in under 30 minutes. For context, BSOL has already amassed over $550 million in net inflows, though Thursday’s net take was a modest $1.5 million.

What’s driving this? Several forces interact:

- Product cycle psychology: New tickers attract “first look” capital, especially when they offer narrative differentiation. That doesn’t automatically translate into durable creations after day one. - ETF plumbing: Headline trading volume is not the same as net inflows. Creations and redemptions depend on authorized participants seeing tight spreads and sufficient demand to hold shares. Early sessions can show high turnover without lasting AUM growth. - Rebalancing mechanics: After a strong run into early October, some allocators appear to be re-risking away from beta or simply harvesting gains. That can cluster outflows in the largest funds where liquidity is deepest. - Macro overlay: With rates, politics, and growth signals in flux, risk budgets get cut. Crypto often sits at the edge of those cuts.

The takeaway for practitioners isn’t that XRP is “replacing” Bitcoin in institutional portfolios. It’s that the crypto ETF complex is maturing into a rotation market where attention can sprint while capital walks. IBIT and FBTC are absorbing rebalances and risk-off reductions; niche launches capture curiosity and, sometimes, tactical flow. The sustainability test arrives in weeks two through six, when creations must show up consistently rather than just intraday churn.

Keep an eye on three markers to separate signal from noise: net creations (not volume), persistence of flows after launch, and whether benchmark outflows stabilize as macro volatility cools. If those line up, the current rotation looks like a temporary attention shock rather than a structural break in core Bitcoin and Ethereum demand.