Three trackers, three answers about what bitcoin ETFs did on Tuesday
SoSoValue and Farside both put September 8 at a $46.6 million net outflow. Lookonchain published a $14.4 million net inflow for the same session.
US spot bitcoin ETFs took $46.6 million of net outflows on September 8, according to SoSoValue, ending three straight sessions of inflows. Farside Investors puts the same day at $46.6 million out, to the decimal. Lookonchain published $14.42 million in, for the same session.
One of those is wrong. Possibly two.
The gap is $61 million and, more awkwardly, a sign. Ether tells the same story from the other end. SoSoValue had ether ETFs shedding $24.3 million on September 8 while Fidelity's FETH pulled in $9.89 million. Lookonchain had ether ETFs adding 3,844 ETH, worth $9.61 million. Same funds, same Tuesday, opposite direction.
Sept 9 Update:
#Bitcoin ETFs:
1D NetFlow: +182 $BTC(+$14.42M)🟢
7D NetFlow: +12,267 $BTC(+$969.52M)🟢
#Ethereum ETFs:
1D NetFlow: +3,844 $ETH(+$9.61M)🟢
7D NetFlow: +12,262 $ETH(+$30.66M)🟢 t.co/hPzIfb7zNH
Why does this happen? Because "flows" is not one number. Farside and SoSoValue publish creations and redemptions as the funds report them, which is probably why they agree to a rounding error (they are almost certainly reading the same filings). Lookonchain counts coins moving in and out of custodial wallets on chain, then multiplies by a reference price, which lags settlement and misses in-kind moves that never touch the addresses it watches. Its own implied bitcoin price on Tuesday works out to $79,231 a coin, against $78,065 in the post it published the day before (divide the dollars by the coins and see for yourself). Neither is the closing print.
So when a headline says the ETFs bought, ask which ledger. You are being shown either a share-count change or a wallet balance change, and on a quiet day those two things can point at each other.
We pulled Farside's full session table to see how much the quiet days matter.
September 1 through 8 nets out to $723.4 million of inflow across five sessions, and $730.8 million of that arrived on Thursday September 3 alone. Take Thursday out and the week is slightly negative, which is roughly the pattern all year. There was no session on Monday September 7, because US markets were shut for Labor Day, which is why the three-day inflow streak SoSoValue described covers September 2, 3 and 4.
That is the shape of the whole year in miniature. One session does the work, four sessions do the noise, and the daily flow post gets written anyway.
Elsewhere in the same day's tape, CoinDesk reported that XRP ETFs took in nearly $2 million on Tuesday while bitcoin, ether, solana and HYPE funds all saw outflows. Two million dollars is roughly four percent of what left bitcoin, and it got a MARKETS bulletin, because a small number attached to a new product reads as a trend and a large number attached to an old one reads as weather.
Our read is that daily ETF flow has stopped carrying information and is now mostly a content format. The useful series is weekly, and even weekly it is dominated by single blocks trading at the close. We would rather watch one thing. Does any week in the fourth quarter post net inflows without a single session above $400 million doing the lifting? Broad demand looks like that. Nothing we can see this year has.
If you quote a flow number in the next month, quote the source with it. The trackers are not going to reconcile, and the funds are not going to publish faster.
Sources
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