A spot bitcoin ETF flow is the net number of fund shares created minus shares redeemed in a day, valued in dollars. Farside Investors' table shows a net $241.1 million for the five sessions from September 28 to October 2, 2026. That figure counts changes in fund share counts. It does not count purchases on an exchange.
How a flow is created
Investors buy and sell spot bitcoin ETF shares on an exchange, the way they trade any stock. Those trades move shares between investors and do not change how much bitcoin the fund holds. Holdings change only when an authorized participant, or AP, creates or redeems shares with the trust.
An AP is a registered broker-dealer that has signed an agreement with the fund's sponsor. The iShares Bitcoin Trust's filing for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 says only APs can place orders, in baskets of 40,000 shares or multiples. Individual investors cannot create or redeem shares with the trust directly.
In our explanation, APs keep the share price close to NAV. When demand pushes the price above NAV, an AP can create shares at NAV and sell them at the higher price, which adds supply and pulls the price back. When the price falls below NAV, an AP can buy shares and redeem them for bitcoin or cash. Each of those actions shows up in the flow table.
Buyers and sellers meet on an exchange. The trust is not a party.
NAV is the value of the fund's bitcoin per share.
Orders come in baskets of 40,000 shares, paid in cash or bitcoin.
Cash orders are converted to bitcoin. In-kind orders move bitcoin directly.
After the 4:00 p.m. ET NAV, the change in shares outstanding estimates the flow.
The SEC approved listing and trading of spot bitcoin products on January 10, 2024. Until mid-2025 the trusts could create and redeem only in cash. An SEC order dated July 29, 2025 added in-kind transactions, where the AP delivers bitcoin for new shares or hands shares back to receive bitcoin. The SEC said in-kind transactions may improve tax efficiency and lower costs.
In a cash creation the trust has to buy the bitcoin itself. IBIT's filing says the trust may trade with a counterparty or through Coinbase Prime, which acts as its prime execution agent.
The mix has shifted since the order. IBIT's filing for the six months to June 30, 2026 shows $9.36 billion of bitcoin delivered in kind for new shares, against $2.68 billion in cash. On redemptions, $5.49 billion left in kind and $8.34 billion in cash. By our arithmetic, about 78 percent of creation value was in kind and about 60 percent of redemption value was cash.
Where the numbers come from
Four kinds of source matter, and each measures something different.
| Source | What it publishes | Timing | What it leaves out |
|---|---|---|---|
| Issuer fund page (iShares IBIT) | NAV, shares outstanding, net assets, basket size and bitcoin per basket | Daily; the page showed October 6 data on October 7 | No flow figure. You derive it from share counts |
| SEC filings (10-Q, 10-K) | Dollar value of shares issued and redeemed, in cash and in kind | Quarterly | Too slow for daily reading |
| Farside Investors | Net flow per fund and a Total column, in US$ million | After each session; the October 7 row was empty when we read it | Method is not stated on the page |
| CFTC Commitments of Traders | Futures positions by trader category | Weekly, as of a Tuesday | CME contracts only, not ETF flows |
Farside's table covers twelve funds, with listed fees running from 0.14 percent to 1.50 percent. A fund missing from a tracker is missing from its total, so check the column list before comparing totals across sites.
You can estimate a flow from the issuer page. IBIT's page showed 1,423,600,000 shares outstanding and a NAV of $48.4152 on October 6. The change in shares outstanding between two days, multiplied by NAV, gives a flow estimate.
One 40,000-share basket held 22.64 bitcoin and was worth $1,936,444.96 that day. Farside's IBIT figure for October 6 was $122.0 million, which is about 63 baskets, or 2.5 million shares, by our arithmetic.
The trust's filing says NAV is struck after 4:00 p.m. ET using the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate for New York. A session's flow therefore cannot be final before the close. Farside's page does not say whether it values flows at NAV or at the closing price, so two trackers can differ slightly.
A flow is not buying pressure on one exchange
A $122.0 million day sounds like $122.0 million of bitcoin bought. Three facts argue against reading it that way.
First, most trading never touches the trust. IBIT traded 30,372,356 shares on October 6, and the net creation behind Farside's figure was roughly 8 percent of that. The rest moved shares between investors.
Second, an in-kind creation involves no purchase at the moment it happens. The AP hands over bitcoin it already owns, bought earlier or somewhere else. The flow table records the transfer, but the order books never saw an order.
Redemptions work the same way in reverse. An in-kind redemption pays the AP in bitcoin, so nothing has to be sold on a spot exchange. IBIT's filing shows $5.49 billion of bitcoin left the trust in kind in the first half of 2026. An outflow in the table does not by itself mean selling on an exchange.
Third, even a cash creation does not point to one exchange. The filing names the possible routes, a trading counterparty or Coinbase Prime, and does not say which venue fills the order. A flow figure also records the day's net change, not the hour when buying or selling took place.
Why some inflows are hedged
A basis trade is a position on the gap between two prices for the same asset, not on the asset's direction. In our explanation, the trader buys bitcoin exposure, such as ETF shares, and sells a futures contract at a higher price for a later date. The two positions offset price moves, and the trader aims to earn the premium as the contract converges on the spot price.
Take hypothetical round numbers, not market data. Bitcoin trades at $100 and a futures contract for three months ahead trades at $103. A trader buys $100 of exposure, sells the contract at $103 and holds both. If the two prices converge at expiry, the trader gains the $3 gap whether bitcoin ends higher or lower, before costs.
When a basis trader buys ETF shares, the flow table can show an inflow. The trader is not predicting a higher bitcoin price, so the inflow carries no view on direction. If the premium shrinks and the trader closes both legs, the table can show an outflow.
Public data can only bound this. The CFTC's Traders in Financial Futures report shows that on September 29, 2026 leveraged funds, the category that includes hedge funds, held 11,836 short and 4,980 long CME bitcoin futures contracts. Each contract covers 5 bitcoin. Asset managers held 5,069 long and 1,483 short, out of 19,596 contracts of open interest.
The net short of 6,856 leveraged-fund contracts is about 34,000 bitcoin, by our arithmetic. IBIT's 1,423,600,000 shares represent roughly 806,000 bitcoin at 22.64 bitcoin per basket. The CME shorts are small beside that, but they cannot show hedges on other venues. No filing we read states how much ETF money is hedged.
How to read a week of flows
The table below uses real figures from Farside's table, read on October 7, 2026. Values are in US$ millions, and a negative number means net redemptions. The "All other funds" column is our subtraction of IBIT and FBTC from the Total.
| Date (2026) | IBIT | FBTC | All other funds | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 28 | 54.8 | -10.9 | -12.9 | 31.0 |
| Sep 29 | 51.1 | 0.0 | 15.1 | 66.2 |
| Sep 30 | -9.5 | -125.6 | -13.6 | -148.7 |
| Oct 1 | 195.6 | -60.7 | -32.2 | 102.7 |
| Oct 2 | 158.2 | 29.3 | 2.4 | 189.9 |
| Week | 450.2 | -167.9 | -41.2 | 241.1 |
The headline is a net inflow of $241.1 million, but three things sit under it. IBIT took in $450.2 million while FBTC lost $167.9 million, so the two largest issuers moved in opposite directions. September 30 was a net outflow of $148.7 million, inside a week that still finished positive.
The week before was larger. Farside's totals for September 21 to 25 add up to $2,385.8 million, about ten times this week's figure, and the daily total fell every day, from $999.0 million on Monday to $134.5 million on Friday. The next two sessions were mixed: a net outflow of $89.8 million on October 5 and an inflow of $118.8 million on October 6.
Farside's summary rows put the average day at $84.4 million. This week's daily average was $48.2 million. The table also lists a cumulative total of $57,886 million, with IBIT at $65,924 million and GBTC, the fund with the highest listed fee at 1.50 percent, at negative $27,896 million. A total can therefore hide one fund shrinking while others grow.
Five habits keep one table from misleading you.
- Read the fund columns before the total. Two large funds moving in opposite directions tell a different story from broad buying.
- Compare a day with the table's own average and with the prior week, not with zero.
- Treat one session as one data point and look at five or more.
- Ask whether a flow could be in kind or hedged before linking it to the bitcoin price.
- Check the row's date and the source, because the final figure waits for the 4:00 p.m. ET NAV.
Our report on the $170 million inflow day when Hashdex's DEFI fund announced its closure shows the fund-by-fund view, with IBIT supplying about two thirds of the total. Not every crypto ETF holds only bitcoin either, as T. Rowe Price's multi-token TKNZ launch shows, so a bitcoin flow table does not cover the whole category. Flow tables describe what happened to fund share counts. They do not forecast prices.
