Analyst: $1.3 Billion IBIT 'Dark Pool' Sale May Have Been the Cause of BTC's Rapid Drop

BlockBeats News, May 27th - An analyst stated that a $1.3 billion BlackRock Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) dark pool trade may be related to Bitcoin's recent sharp drop.

The data shows that a trader sold 29.2 million shares of IBIT in a single dark pool trade at 14:30 UTC on Tuesday, with a transaction size of approximately $1.3 billion. Following the trade, the Bitcoin price quickly fell from $77,875 to $76,720 within 10 minutes, further dipping to around $75,600.

Alex Thorn, Head of Research at Galaxy Digital, remarked that this was the largest dark pool trade in IBIT size he had ever seen. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas also noted that the sell order exceeded the second-largest IBIT sell order of the day by a factor of 22.

Meanwhile, the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF has seen net outflows for 8 consecutive trading days, with outflows exceeding $2 billion since May 14th. On Tuesday, IBIT saw a net outflow of approximately $192 million.

Additionally, Jane Street has reduced its Bitcoin ETF holdings by around 70% in the first quarter, and Goldman Sachs has trimmed about 10%, indicating that some institutions are reducing their exposure to Bitcoin ETFs.