$1.3 Billion IBIT Block Trade Crosses Without Moving Bitcoin, Signaling ETF Market Maturity

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.”

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

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.