Bitcoin Weakens After $1.3 Billion BlackRock IBIT Sale as Institutional Selling Pressure Builds

Bitcoin weakened after a large sale in BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund.

Cointelegraph reported on May 27 that an anonymous investor sold 29.2 million shares of the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT). The transaction was valued at about $1.3 billion.

The trade was executed in a dark pool, a venue institutional investors often use to handle large transactions privately.

Bitcoin came under short-term pressure after the sale. TradingView data showed the cryptocurrency falling about 1.5% over roughly 10 minutes immediately after the transaction, to $76,720 from $77,875. The decline later deepened, with Bitcoin sliding to $75,600 about 12 hours later.

Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital, called it one of the largest dark-pool trades he had seen.

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said the transaction was overwhelmingly larger than other IBIT sell orders executed that day. It was more than 22 times the size of the second-largest sell order.

Fund flows across the broader U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF market have also deteriorated. Spot Bitcoin ETFs have posted net outflows for eight straight trading sessions. According to Trader T, the broader spot Bitcoin ETF market recorded net outflows of $333.6 million on May 27. Since May 14, cumulative outflows from U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs have exceeded $2 billion.

Bitcoin was trading at $75,670.96 on Binance’s USDT market, down 1.6% from a day earlier.