Bitcoin inflows drop 80% to $12B as investors chase AI stocks

Bitcoin net inflows have slowed 80% to roughly $12 billion year-to-date as retail investors redirect capital toward AI-related stocks, Bernstein said Monday.

"Bitcoin being boring this cycle should not be held against it, and does not take away from the long-term store-of-value thesis," analysts at Bernstein's Global Digital Assets team wrote in a research note.

Net inflows from exchange-traded funds and corporate treasury buyers reached $60 billion across all of 2025 but have fallen to about $12 billion this year, an 80% decline. Bitcoin ETFs have posted $2.6 billion in net outflows from a total asset base of $75 billion, with 13 consecutive days of withdrawals through June 3 — the longest streak since the products launched in early 2024, according to Galaxy Research. The 20-day trailing outflow reached $5.42 billion and 73,080 BTC, both record readings.

The rotation shows a broader competition for capital between two of the market's most dominant growth narratives. With AI-related stocks and a pipeline of high-profile tech IPOs drawing institutional attention, Bitcoin has fallen roughly 50% from its October peak of $126,000 to trade near $63,000. Bernstein maintained its year-end price target of $150,000, which would mark a new all-time high.

Strategy keeps buying through the drawdown

Strategy, the software company turned Bitcoin treasury giant, has continued accumulating despite the price decline. The firm raised $7.5 billion through its preferred stock instrument this year, using the proceeds to purchase roughly 100,000 Bitcoin. It now holds more than 845,000 BTC, worth approximately $53.6 billion.

The company's sale of 32 BTC — worth $2.5 million at the time — was insignificant from a supply perspective but carried psychological weight, according to NYDIG head of research Greg Cipolaro. Strategy has spent years as one of the market's most consistent buyers, and any suggestion it could become a source of supply forces investors to rethink an important pillar of the bull case, he said.

On-chain signals point to a reset

Several on-chain indicators are approaching levels that have historically coincided with major bottoms, Cipolaro noted. Bitcoin's market-value-to-realized-value ratio has fallen to 1.2, close to the level where market value converges with investors' aggregate cost basis. The percentage of supply held in profit recently slipped below 50%, another metric often associated with capitulation.

Yet the drawdown remains modest by historical standards. Bitcoin has fallen roughly 53% from its peak, compared with 75% to 90% declines in prior cycles. The previous three Bitcoin bear markets lasted roughly a year from peak to trough; Friday's sub-$60,000 plunge came only 242 days after the October high.

"Viewed independently, none of these developments appears sufficient to drive a major correction in Bitcoin," Cipolaro wrote. "Viewed collectively, they help explain why price action has weakened despite the absence of a clear deterioration in underlying adoption metrics."

Whether the low is already in place likely depends on whether institutional demand has structurally altered the cycle or merely delayed a deeper reset, he added.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.