Market context
US spot Bitcoin ETFs extended their positive streak to eight straight days on Thursday, pulling in $223.2 million and lifting April's tally to $2.43 billion with four trading days left, according to SoSoValue data flagged by NewsBTC. Bloomberg Senior ETF analyst Erich Balchunas wrote on X that 'every single rolling period we track is now positive,' with cumulative lifetime flows reaching $58.33 billion. BlackRock's IBIT alone took in roughly $3 billion across the run, putting it in the top 1% of all ETFs by inflow magnitude over the period.
The bid is institutional. BlackRock and Morgan Stanley together added $34 million in BTC ETF exposure this week, per filings flagged by Crypto Briefing. Nakamoto Holdings launched a Bitcoin derivatives program with Bitwise and Kraken on Thursday, structured to generate options premiums against its BTC treasury and hedge tail exposure, CoinTelegraph reported. That kind of corporate balance-sheet engineering wasn't on the table even six months ago, and it points to treasury-style allocators settling in for the long hold rather than rotating out.
Macro is messier. The DOJ closed its criminal probe of Fed Chair Jerome Powell on Friday, per Bitcoin Magazine, clearing political headroom for Kevin Warsh's nomination as the next Chair. Markets read that as both a near-term resolution and a longer-term policy unknown, given Warsh's hawkish track record at the Board of Governors during the 2008 crisis. US-Iran tensions remain unresolved, which has fed Bitcoin's bid as a haven trade but also caps it whenever a de-escalation headline crosses the wire.