Eric Balchunas: Gold And Bitcoin ETFs Just Pulled A Record $7 Billion In Five Days
Bitcoin is pushing back toward the $81,000 level, and this time the buying looks different. It is coming from spot, not leverage, and it is showing up in the same week that gold and Bitcoin ETFs just posted their biggest combined inflow on record.
THE WALL AT $80,810
On the show, the order book on CoinGlass showed one dominant resting sell wall sitting at $80,810, mostly stacked on Coinbase Pro, with smaller walls layered around $82,000, $83,000 and a final cluster near $84,000 to $86,000. Those levels have been treated as the market's line in the sand this week: a close above $83,000 is the trigger the show has been watching for confirmation that the broader downtrend is over.
Some of the resting sell orders near $83,000 have reportedly been sitting untouched for more than 100 days, meaning a break through the lower wall could force sellers who have been parked there since well before the current rally to reconsider whether they still want to be short at these prices.
SPOT DEMAND, NOT LEVERAGE, IS DRIVING IT
Bitcoin already ran through one short squeeze last week. The largest cryptocurrency surged 7.9% in a day to around $77,000, triggering a short squeeze that wiped out roughly $1.21 billion in bearish bets as the rebound gathered pace. That squeeze helped carry price into the current range, but the more recent move has been read as different in kind: it is being fueled by spot buying rather than a cascade of forced short covers, which is why the show has moved away from calling this a dead-cat bounce.
THE DEBASEMENT TRADE STEALS THE SPOTLIGHT FROM AI
The bigger signal came from Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas. Balchunas tweeted that gold and Bitcoin funds had drawn a combined $7 billion over the past week, calling it "by far a record for a 5-day period" and attributing the surge to a debasement trade pulling attention from AI. He noted IBIT's year-to-date flows have turned positive after a long spell in the red.
The timing lines up with a rough two weeks in Washington. Treasury, led by Secretary Scott Bessent, targeted the 10- to 20-year and 20- to 30-year portion of the market with a decision to "at least double" the maximum size of its buyback operations, from $2 billion to "at least" $4 billion. The announcement landed the same week Treasury figures showed the national debt had crossed the $40 trillion mark, prompting Bessent to say "there's nothing magic about the 40 trillion number, and we can grow our way out of it. The math on that claim is disputed. Federal debt is growing far faster than the economy, and the show's read is that the comment functioned less as a fiscal plan than as a signal to markets that Washington intends to inflate the debt away rather than cut spending or grow out of it.
That is the case the show has been building around a 60/40 portfolio that is fully exposed to fiat currency, and around bond buyers realizing there is no risk-free return left to chase. Once that certainty broke, capital started rotating down the risk curve into hard assets, and gold and Bitcoin ETFs caught the flow.
WHAT A CLOSE ABOVE $83,000 WOULD MEAN
The show's standing thesis is that the bear market is over, with roughly $57,000 to $60,000 marking the bottom. A daily close above $83,000 would be treated as confirmation, opening the door to a retest of $90,000 and, if the current pace of buying holds, a run back toward all-time highs before year end. A pullback along the way would not change that read. The open question is simply whether spot demand keeps outpacing the sell orders stacked between $80,810 and $86,000, or whether those walls hold and the rally stalls where it is.
This story comes from the Simply Bitcoin Live show. Watch the full episode.
