Bitcoin ETFs switch back to outflows as China’s DeepSeek spooks investors

Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the United States shifted back to outflows for the first time since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, triggered by the global adoption of the Chinese AI app DeepSeek, which spooked investors and led to massive liquidations across the crypto market yesterday.

According to data from SoSoValue, the 12 spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $457.48 million in outflows on Jan. 28, ending their seven-day inflow streak, during which over $4.2 billion entered the funds.

Fidelity’s FBTC experienced the highest outflows of the day, shedding $268.59 million, while Grayscale’s GBTC followed with $108.47 million in outflows.

Bitwise’s BITB and ARK 21Shares’ ARKB also saw withdrawals of $88.57 million and $50.11 million, respectively. VanEck’s HODL reported a modest outflow of $5.68 million on the day.

Meanwhile, BlackRock’s IBIT, the only outlier of the day, recorded $63.94 million in inflows, bringing its cumulative net inflows to nearly $40 billion since its launch. The remaining six BTC ETFs saw zero flows on the day.

The total trading volume for these investment products stood at $4.8 billion on Jan. 27 much higher than the $3.65 billion recorded the previous day.

The significant shift in flows from these BTC ETFs occurred as Bitcoin (BTC) dropped from $105,000 to an intraday low of $97,855 yesterday, coinciding with nearly $1 billion in liquidations across the global crypto market.

The primary reason for the crash appears to be investors adopting a risk-off sentiment following the success of DeepSeek, a Chinese competitor to ChatGPT. Developed at a fraction of the cost of U.S.-based projects like OpenAI and released as open-source, DeepSeek has raised concerns among analysts, who note that it poses a potential threat to U.S. dominance in the AI sector.

At press time, Bitcoin has recovered and is up 2.6% over the past day, trading at $102,998 per coin.