Big Bitcoin holders quietly shifted billions last week — and the market barely flinched.
Arkham Intelligence tracked steady selling from BlackRock-linked wallets over the past week, showing roughly 15,000 BTC — about $1.01 billion — routed through Coinbase Prime. Those outflows look tied to daily redemptions from BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT). The redemptions didn’t stop at week’s end: Arkham recorded another $105.19 million in IBIT outflows on May 25 and $333.71 million on May 26, extending the selling pressure into the new week.
At the same time, on-chain sleuths flagged activity from legacy holders. A Satoshi-era miner moved 2,650 BTC (roughly $203 million) to two major OTC desks, FalconX and Cumberland, in three transactions; that wallet still holds about 6,000 BTC (around $460 million). Large transfers to OTC desks are a common way for big holders to find counterparties without dumping coins on exchange order books and creating visible price impact — but they do convert previously inactive supply into tradable inventory.
Despite more than $1 billion in ETF-linked selling, Bitcoin’s price has shown resilience. The token has been trading above $74,000, even touching mid-$70k levels in early May before pulling back into the high-$60k range by May 26 — a roughly $8k move from that intra-month peak. The disconnect between heavy institutional outflows and steady price action is notable: retail sentiment on social channels is full of “dip-buying” narratives, and buyers have been willing to absorb large blocks coming off the books.
Third-party flow data backs up the reversal in ETF demand. SoSoValue reports the 11 U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs logged net outflows of $1.26 billion between May 18–22, reversing an April that saw $1.97 billion in net inflows — the largest monthly total so far this year.
That leaves the market with an open question Arkham has been asking bluntly: “If BlackRock is selling… who’s buying?” The answer appears to be a mix of private counterparties and resilient retail demand that, so far, has prevented a deeper price break. But the shift of supply from dormant wallets back into circulation — via ETFs, OTC desks, or miners — is something traders will watch closely for signs of renewed selling pressure or the emergence of fresh buyers.
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