Conversations surrounding cryptocurrency ETFs are intensifying, drawing attention from major institutional players. This week, Bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded their best week for inflows since April, pulling in roughly $1 billion in net new capital. The performance ranks as the third-strongest weekly inflow since October 2024, according to Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas.
The inflows come in the wake of one of the most significant security incidents in Bitcoin’s recent history: the Coldcard hardware wallet hack. Since the hack began on July 30, a handful of major Bitcoin ETFs—including BlackRock’s IBIT, Fidelity’s FBTC, BITC, ARKB, and MSBT—have posted several straight sessions of net inflows, totaling approximately $620 million in the immediate aftermath. Balchunas described the timing as a “hard to ignore” correlation, though he stopped short of claiming a direct causal relationship. “It would be ironic, yet somehow on brand, if the hack of BTC in cold storage (seemingly the worst possible scenario) marked the beginning of the next run,” he noted.
The logic is straightforward: when a hardware wallet widely regarded as “unhackable” gets breached, investors may reconsider the risks of self-custody and rotate toward regulated, institutionally managed products like ETFs. The Coldcard exploit involved a firmware vulnerability that weakened seed-phrase entropy for over five years, making private keys trivially brute-forceable. Galaxy Research confirmed 1,596 BTC stolen across roughly 7,300 addresses in three confirmed attack waves, with a suspected fourth wave potentially pushing losses toward 2,055 BTC. The largest single theft involved 1,159 BTC, and a separate attacker has begun mixing approximately 64 BTC through Wasabi Wallet’s CoinJoin service. Total losses have been estimated above $116 million.
Amid this backdrop, Bitcoin is trading near $65,000, up roughly 3.2% on the week. The advance followed a surprise contraction in U.S. jobs, which pushed traders to scale back Federal Reserve rate-hike bets. However, gold and silver have outperformed crypto this week, with gold surging past $4,300. For Bitcoin, the immediate question is whether ETF inflows can continue, but the $1 billion weekly figure remains a strong signal of renewed institutional interest.
