Investors Pull $326 Million From Bitcoin ETFs Amid Tariff Angst

Investors pulled $326 million from spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds on Tuesday amid flaring tensions between the U.S. and its trading partners over President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

Tuesday’s drawdown was the sharpest single-day pullback for spot Bitcoin ETFs since the products bled $371 million on March 11, according to crypto data provider CoinGlass.

BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF, which has registered nearly $40 billion in net inflows since its launch last year, lost $253 million, representing the fund’s third worst day on record.

The pullback came as investors braced for Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs to go into effect at midnight Eastern Time, which were poised to affect imports from over 180 countries when Trump unveiled his sweeping levies a week ago.

Since then, the U.S. and China have gone tit-for-tat. After the White House confirmed on Tuesday that Chinese imports will be subject to 104% duties, Beijing responded by slapping American goods with new 50% levies, yielding a total tariff rate of 84%.

The outflows registered on Tuesday were a “a clear signal of large-scale de-risking by institutions,” BRN analyst Valentin Fournier wrote in a Wednesday note, adding that a decline in volume from the prior day showed their “switch to a more defensive positioning.”

Spot Bitcoin ETFs are currently on a four-day losing streak, with only one positive day so far this month. On April 2, when Trump made his “Liberation Day” announcement, spot Bitcoin ETFs took in $218 million.

The price of Bitcoin was recently changing hands around $77,600 on Wednesday, down 2.5% over the past 24 hours, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko. On Tuesday, the asset’s price fell as low as $75,100, nearing a five-month low on Monday.

Investors meanwhile pulled $3.3 million from spot Ethereum ETFs on Tuesday, according to CoinGlass, with the outflows being led by Fidelity’s Ethereum fund.

Teucrium’s 2x Long Daily XRP ETF, the first leveraged XRP product in the U.S., also debuted on Tuesday. It generated $5 million in trading volume, Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Edited by James Rubin