Today, Friday, March 29, the stock market in the United States is closed, so yesterday, Thursday, was the last day of the business week and also of the trading month. In these 4 days, spot bitcoin (BTC) ETFs had positive capital flows, thus breaking a 5-day negative streak that was beginning to cause concern. According to data collected by the SoSo Value portal, Net capital inflows into bitcoin ETFs during March were $183 million. The accumulated net inflow since January 10—when the ETFs began operating—already reaches $12 billion. In the following image you can see what has been described so far. Each green candle (vertical bar) is a day with positive capital flows and each red candle is a day with negative capital flows:
Capital flows to and from bitcoin ETFs in the United States. Source: SoSo Value. Considering that bitcoin ETFs are primarily (although not exclusively) used by institutional, corporate investors and wealth managers, These funds can be considered a “thermometer” that measures the degree of confidence of these players about bitcoin.
And, with «about bitcoin» we do not only refer to what is strictly related to the digital currency that Satoshi Nakamoto created but also to the entire cryptocurrency industry and ecosystem. Issues, for example, of a regulatory or judicial nature, can positively or negatively influence market perception of the industry. This week there were two important events related to these areas, which are a lawsuit from the US Department of Justice towards the Kucoin exchange for allegedly facilitating money laundering; and the sentence to 25 years in prison for Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, for a million-dollar scam. For those who want a regulated bitcoin and cryptocurrency ecosystem (such as large institutional investors), news of this type is obviously welcome. With all this, the price of bitcoin closes the week on the rise. At the time of writing, BTC is trading above $70,000 and its rise in the last 7 days was approximately 10%, as can be seen in the following graph:
Bitcoin price for the last 7 days. Source: CoinGecko. But, it is worth clarifying that not all judicial news is good for the bitcoin industry. Yesterday it was learned that a court rejected Coinbase's request to dismiss the lawsuit that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed against it for alleged sales of unregistered securities. Taking into account that Coinbase is the main custodian of the bitcoins that back ETFs, The fact that it is on demand causes some fear among investors. This may be what has slowed the rise of bitcoin, which has not yet returned to its all-time high of $73,700.