U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs have become the main buyers of bitcoin as treasury-company purchases lose momentum, Coinbase says. The funds still shed $635 million in a single day on October 23, a sign of how quickly that new support can fade.
Bitcoin has gained two channels for institutional demand beyond direct purchases in recent years: publicly listed spot ETFs, which own bitcoin on behalf of their unit holders and give traditional investors exposure through an ordinary brokerage account, and listed companies that build bitcoin holdings on their own balance sheets, often called bitcoin treasury companies. Both have helped push bitcoin from a niche for crypto investors into an asset wealth managers and financial advisers now have to factor in. Which of the two channels is driving purchases says something about how robust demand actually is – and that is the picture Coinbase now draws in its weekly market commentary.
According to Coinbase senior quantitative strategist Colin Basco, institutional demand for bitcoin is going through a transition. In the second half of 2026, purchases by bitcoin treasury companies have lost momentum, and spot ETFs have taken on a more central role in supporting the market. That strengthens the ETFs' influence on price moves, while other buyer groups struggle to regain momentum.
For investors who track bitcoin as a portfolio asset, that is a meaningful shift in who actually sets the price: a market dominated by a single buyer group is more exposed to swings in that group's own appetite.
But ETFs are no guarantee of a steady rise. On October 23, the funds recorded net outflows of $635 million, one of the largest single-day withdrawals of the second half. The move coincided with a resurgence of risk aversion and fears of renewed tension between the United States and Iran. Investors cut their exposure despite the ETFs' central role in the market.
At the same time, overall liquidity in the crypto market is showing signs of strain. The stablecoin supply, which gives investors capital to buy digital assets, has fallen by nearly $13 billion since its May peak. The so-called Coinbase premium, a measure of buying pressure from U.S. investors relative to the rest of the world, has also stayed negative through October.
The indicators suggest U.S. buyers outside the ETFs have not yet returned at scale. That limits the market's ability to absorb selling and sustain prices over time, and puts more pressure on the ETFs to make up for the missing participation from other investors.
Coinbase identifies the $80,000 to $82,000 zone as a first key support, where the 50-day moving average meets the cost basis of bitcoin ETFs. A break of that zone would open the way to the next support between $73,000 and $75,000. The macro backdrop adds to the uncertainty: Coinbase puts the odds of a U.S. Federal Reserve rate hike in December at 80 percent, on top of geopolitical tension between Washington and Tehran.
In the options market, demand for downside protection has risen sharply. The so-called 25-delta skew, a measure of the price gap between call and put options, has climbed from 5 to 15 percent for one-day and one-week maturities – a sign that investors are increasingly hedging against a drop. Meanwhile, more than 2.1 million bitcoin are concentrated in the zone between $87,500 and $91,700, which could make it harder for the price to break durably above that level.
Sources: Cointribune, Coinbase
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