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A $1.3 billion block of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) shares changed hands in a dark pool Tuesday morning, marking one of the largest off-exchange Bitcoin ETF transactions since the products launched 15 months ago.
The nearly 29 million shares were executed at 10:30 a.m. ET, dwarfing all other trades of the session. The sale came as U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs extended their outflow streak, with IBIT facing $192.4 million in net redemptions on Tuesday, per SoSoValue data.
Across all spot Bitcoin ETFs, the week’s total net outflows stood at $334 million as of Tuesday, following two consecutive weeks of $1 billion and $1.26 billion in redemptions.
The transaction highlights a critical tension: massive institutional selling is happening off-exchange to avoid rocking the order book. While Bitcoin’s price still reacted, the reaction was contained, experts told Decrypt.
A dark pool allows a seller to settle a trade with a broker without hitting public order books, concealing the transaction’s full weight from the open market.
Bitcoin held relatively steady around $76,000 after the trade, according to CoinGecko data, but a narrow lens tells a different story. On a lower timeframe, Bitcoin shed nearly 1.4% from $78,000 toward $77,000 during the sell flow, according to Georgii Verbitskii, derivatives trader and founder of TYMIO.
“The reason the decline was not even deeper is that the market was still able to absorb a substantial amount of supply without a full liquidity breakdown,” he told Decrypt.
Shawn Young, chief analyst at MEXC Research, echoed Verbitskii’s take. “The price did react in the minutes after the print, but the move was contained because this looked more like a large portfolio adjustment than a disorderly liquidation,” he told Decrypt.
Investor sentiment deteriorated alongside the outflows, tanking further into the fear territory from 34 to 25, according to Fear and Greed Index data.
Users on prediction market Myriad, owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, put a 69% chance on Bitcoin’s next move pushing it to $84,000 instead of dropping to $55,000. That number has fallen from 79% last Monday, highlighting a decline in investor optimism. Bitcoin is currently trading at around $75,825, down 1.9% on the day according to CoinGecko data.
Though the dark pool transaction kept the worst of the selling pressure off public books, experts agree it was net negative for the ecosystem.
“It reflects a large source of demand leaving the market,” Verbitskii said, adding that Bitcoin is showing structural and technical weakness. “We are not yet seeing strong standalone demand capable of fully offsetting large institutional selling flows.”
Bitcoin has struggled to hold ground since failing to retest $82,000 in early May. Macro headwinds, including April’s hot CPI print, have added pressure, with markets now pricing a 99% chance the Federal Reserve keeps rates unchanged at its June 17 meeting, according to data from the FedWatch tool.
While the broader ETF market is “still functioning in an orderly way,” Young said, institutions are “reducing or rebalancing risk after a strong run.”
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