Bitcoin ETF outflows hit $5.6B over 19 days as holders sit…

Spot Bitcoin ETF holders have now seen outflows in 17 of the last 19 trading days, with cumulative net selling reaching $5.6 billion. A tighter 13-day streak accounts for $4.4 billion of that total. The average cost basis for ETF holders sits around $83,000, while the broader active investor cost basis is approximately $78,000 — meaning the majority of people who bought BTC in the past 18 months are currently underwater.

Why it matters

More than half of all BTC in circulation is now held at an unrealized loss, a condition that Charles Schwab's director of research flagged on Bloomberg as a historically reliable marker of bear market bottoms. The logic is mechanical: holders who have refused to sell through the drawdown have little incentive to capitulate now, and as selling pressure exhausts itself, the marginal seller disappears. This pattern has preceded recoveries in every major Bitcoin bear market on record — 2018-19, 2020, and 2022.

The mining cost floor adds a second data point. The most efficient miners produce Bitcoin at roughly $60,000 per coin. Historically, that production cost has acted as a price floor in deep bear markets, though analysts note it can fluctuate and varies significantly across mining operations.

Market impact

BTC has pulled back toward the $61,000 range, testing the 200-week moving average — a level that has served as a consolidation base in prior cycles. The critical distinction from the 2022 FTX-driven collapse, which briefly pushed BTC well below that average, is the absence of a comparable systemic exchange failure. A sustained break below $60,000 would be historically anomalous and, if it occurred, would represent the most significant bear-market deviation Bitcoin has ever produced outside of a black-swan event.