What exactly happened?
US spot Bitcoin ETFs (exchange-traded funds that hold actual bitcoin) lost $201.9 million in net capital on Friday, August 28. According to CryptoSlate, this ended a nine-day run of net inflows during which the funds gathered roughly $3 billion.
The turning point came as the price of bitcoin, per CryptoSlate, fell about 3.2% to $77,696. On the same day, however, funds tracking Ethereum, XRP and Solana together attracted net inflows of $145 million, according to CryptoSlate.
Does this mean investors are moving money out of Bitcoin and into altcoins?
This is the key point where fact needs to be separated from impression.
Only one thing is proven: Friday's weakness was concentrated in Bitcoin ETFs, while products tracking three other cryptocurrencies still pulled in capital. So the US crypto ETF market as a whole did not slow down, it was specifically the bitcoin portion that weakened.
What is NOT proven: that this was a direct rotation, meaning that the same investors pulled money out of Bitcoin and sent it into ETH, XRP or Solana. CryptoSlate explicitly notes that fund-level data does not identify individual buyers. Two flows coinciding on the same day is not evidence that one caused the other.
How is the Solana ETF doing?
A separate milestone was hit by the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (ticker BSOL). According to The Block and The Defiant, on Friday it crossed the $1 billion mark in assets under management (AUM), becoming the first Solana ETF to break through that level. The fund reached this in less than a year since its launch.
Specific figures from the fund's page as of August 26 are reported by The Defiant, citing Glassnode data:
| Metric (source: The Defiant / Glassnode) | Value |
|---|---|
| SOL held | 9,332,360.79 |
| Market value | $1.018 billion |
| Net assets | $1.0175 billion |
What was going on with options, and why do prices differ between sources?
On the same day, according to CoinDesk, $6.4 billion worth of bitcoin options expired. CoinDesk describes how the settlement took place after bitcoin climbed to around $80,000, and traders are now positioning around a notably different price level.
A small note on the numbers to avoid confusion: the sources report the price differently. CryptoSlate cites a drop to $77,696, while CoinDesk refers to a move around $80,000. The difference likely stems from a different measurement point during the day, but the exact reason cannot be confirmed from the available sources. The starting level before this move is not stated by the available sources, so we do not cite it here.
What to watch out for with this type of news?
Single-day ETF flows are noisy, and it is easy to draw narratives from them that the data cannot support. It is more useful to watch whether the split between Bitcoin and the other funds holds for several consecutive days, and whether data emerges that would actually document a direct rotation. Until then, these remain two parallel phenomena, not a proven cause and effect.
We will let time verify this reasoning: if Bitcoin ETFs see a return of net inflows in the coming days, then Friday's episode was more of a one-off than the start of a trend.