A 29 million share block trade of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) executed Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. ET at $43.16 per share, totaling approximately $1.3 billion, according to Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas. The fund closed the session unchanged, with bitcoin holding above $75,000 as the broader market absorbed the trade without disruption.
“Confirmed.. 29 million share trade ($1.3b) of IBIT executed at 1030am this morning,” Balchunas wrote on X. “Price unchanged today, so market absorbed it well.”
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IBIT’s total trading volume on Tuesday reached roughly $3.6 billion, well above its typical session. The fund posted $192 million in net outflows on the day, contributing to $334 million in total outflows across all 12 U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs. IBIT itself has shed roughly $1 billion in outflows over the past week as part of a broader institutional pullback, yet the trade execution at scale suggests the underlying infrastructure can handle large institutional rotations without forcing a price-discovery moment in spot bitcoin.
The structural counterpoint is what made the trade newsworthy.
Long-term bulls, including Joe Burnett of 10X Capital, argued the seamless absorption signals bitcoin is trading at roughly half its power-law-model fair value of $163,500, and that capital is rotating tactically rather than exiting the asset class.
BlackRock’s IBIT holds $61.1 billion in net assets and exposure equal to about 4% of bitcoin’s circulating supply, making it the dominant institutional access point for the asset.
For context on what this trade represented in dollar terms: $1.3 billion is roughly twice the size of Monday’s single-day outflow last week that triggered bitcoin’s slide below $77,000. That outflow moved the market visibly. Tuesday’s trade did not.
