Weekly Digest: The State of Crypto ETFs

The past trading week in mid-August 2025 delivered a watershed moment for digital-asset exchange-traded funds, as combined spot Bitcoin and Ether products posted an unprecedented USD 40 billion in aggregate turnover, eclipsing every previous weekly tally since these vehicles debuted in the United States early last year. This surge in activity was underpinned by a striking divergence in asset-specific flows: while Bitcoin ETFs registered moderately positive net subscriptions, spot Ether ETFs absorbed multi-billion-dollar inflows that translated into the highest weekly volume on record for the asset class. The confluence of new all-time highs for Bitcoin at USD 124 000, Ethereum’s flirtation with its historical peak near USD 4 880, and growing regulatory clarity around digital-asset products has attracted a sizeable cohort of institutional allocators, brokerage platforms, and algorithmic liquidity providers, propelling turnover in these vehicles to levels rivaling the five most active equity ETFs in the United States. Against this backdrop, the latest weekly digest unpacks the quantitative evidence behind the record prints, dissects the catalysts that drove flows, evaluates BlackRock’s outsized role in shaping Ether ETF liquidity, and maps the road ahead for high-net-worth investors monitoring the crossover between traditional portfolio management and on-chain finance.

At the close of trading on Friday, August 15, consolidated tape data compiled by Bloomberg, SoSoValue, and several on-chain order-flow desks indicated that U.S.-listed spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs racked up a combined USD 40 billion in share turnover over the four-day stretch beginning Monday, August 11. Ether ETFs alone generated roughly USD 17 billion of that figure, a level almost triple their previous high and constituting more than forty percent of aggregate crypto ETF volume for the week. Market participants point to the inflection in Ether activity as the decisive factor that lifted the cross-asset total toward a top-five ranking in the broader U.S. ETF landscape, surpassing turnover in heavily traded sector funds such as the Financial Select Sector SPDR while trailing only the SPY and QQQ index trackers on several intraday sessions. That context illustrates not merely an uptick but a structural transition in which digital-asset products compete for liquidity with the deepest instruments in public equities.

While Ether’s breakout dominated headlines, Bitcoin ETFs generated a nuanced pattern of flows that nonetheless contributed to absolute volume records. Using custodial vault reports scraped by Bitbo and consolidated by ETF research desks, net creations in spot Bitcoin vehicles totaled approximately 3 400 BTC for the week, reversing a fortnight of cumulative outflows and highlighting renewed institutional interest as the bellwether token breached USD 124 000 on August 14. The day-by-day granularity of those flows shows how investor sentiment oscillated: an initial withdrawal episode on August 5, characterized by a USD 661 million redemption spike in Grayscale’s GBTC shares,

gave way to a string of four consecutive inflow sessions from August 7 onward, culminating in USD 380 million added on August 14 and a more modest USD 113 million on August 15. Each of these prints translated directly into secondary-market liquidity, as evidenced by the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) closing August 14 with 39 million shares traded on Nasdaq—volumes not seen since the January 2024 launch window.