US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded $517.2 million in net inflows on Wednesday, their largest single-day investment since May 4 — a move that pushed August net inflows to $1.47 billion.

The daily figure caps a strong stretch for the funds. Investors have added roughly $1 billion since Monday, already the strongest weekly net inflow since the week ended Jan. 16, when the products attracted about $1.42 billion. Launched in January 2024 after US Securities and Exchange Commission approval, the spot Bitcoin ETFs have since become a primary conduit for mainstream investors to gain Bitcoin exposure through ordinary brokerage accounts, which is why their daily flows are widely tracked as a gauge of institutional demand.

The inflows came as cryptocurrency prices rallied on Wednesday. The rally coincided with a US Treasury decision to expand buybacks of longer-dated government debt, as well as renewed attention on crypto regulation after President Donald Trump urged Congress to advance the CLARITY Act at a White House event. The Treasury's regular buyback program, introduced in 2024 to support liquidity in older outstanding securities, had previously focused on shorter- and intermediate-dated coupons, making an extension toward the long end of the curve a notable shift. The CLARITY Act, for its part, is proposed legislation that would create a dedicated regulatory framework for digital assets and divide oversight between the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; it still requires passage by both chambers of Congress to become law.

"The Treasury signalling it'll step in at the long end pushed yields and the dollar lower, and gold and silver outperformed equities on the day, so the market priced this as a currency event rather than a growth one," Jonatan Randin, senior market analyst at PrimeXBT, told Cointelegraph.

"Bitcoin moved with gold and silver rather than with risk appetite, which is what the debasement trade looks like when it's working," he said. The "debasement trade" describes positioning in hard assets such as gold — and, for a growing cohort of investors, Bitcoin — as a hedge against the erosion of fiat currency value amid large fiscal deficits and elevated government borrowing.

Bitcoin traded near $72,000 at the time of writing on Thursday, up 11% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. Ether rose 19% to about $2,286.

Spot Ether ETFs, which began trading in the United States in July 2024, also drew capital, logging $189.2 million in net inflows on Wednesday and bringing the week's inflows to roughly $291.5 million. Whether the current pace of inflows holds through the remainder of August, and how far the CLARITY Act advances in Congress, are among the markers observers will be tracking in the coming weeks.

Source: Cointelegraph