Wintermute: No crypto bottom as stablecoins, ETF flows drain

Market maker Wintermute warned in a June 8 note that no clear crypto market bottom has formed. The firm pointed to stablecoin exchange reserves of $62.81 billion on June 10 and unprecedented outflows from Bitcoin spot ETFs as the market moved while Bitcoin traded around $62,000.

Analysts reviewed on-chain data and confirmed a decline in exchange stablecoin balances and sustained ETF redemptions. Wintermute attributed the recent price drop mainly to U.S. institutional selling and ETF outflows, and described a separate 32 BTC sale by a fund called Strategy as immaterial in size and mainly symbolic. Subsequent disclosures showed Strategy later bought 1,550 BTC.

Sentiment data tracked a sharp fall in positive Bitcoin sentiment, from 814 on June 3 to 61 on June 10. Wintermute noted the 32 BTC did not hit exchange order books, and the firm highlighted the sentiment collapse as a market factor.

On-chain measures show a decline in available dollar liquidity on exchanges. Stablecoin reserves on exchanges peaked at $75.12 billion on Nov. 12, 2025 and fell to $62.81 billion by June 10, 2026, a drop of roughly 16 percent. The broader stablecoin supply stood at about $316 billion and fell by about $3.25 billion over the prior week.

Bitcoin spot ETFs swung from large inflows in mid-2025 to a multi-month outflow streak beginning in November 2025. Monthly data recorded a record single-month ETF outflow of $3.48 billion in November 2025. May 2026 registered $2.43 billion in outflows, and the first 10 days of June produced $1.89 billion of redemptions. Total ETF assets declined from $147.73 billion to $77.58 billion over the outflow period.

Recent U.S. macro data showed nonfarm payrolls for May at 172,000 versus roughly 80,000 expected. Services prices reached levels not seen since August 2022, and the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield reached 4.55 percent on Friday.

On-chain metrics of holder behavior showed long-term holder wallets continued to add coins but at a slower pace. Wintermute noted that Bitcoin spent little time in the $50,000–$59,000 range in 2024, leaving fewer on-chain support levels in that zone. The firm added there were no clear signs of capital returning and that a market bottom had not been confirmed.

Technical and cycle analysts outlined trigger levels. One analyst identified a sustained break above about $82,500 as required to reverse the macro downtrend and projected a potential deeper retracement of 60–70 percent that would place prices below $50,000 into the $40,000s in late 2026. An on-chain projection places a possible bottom near $44,627, a 64 percent retracement from the peak.

Wintermute set a near-term market test around a June 12 corporate listing event, while cycle analysis highlighted a longer-term resistance zone near $93,000 that typically breaks in a halving year. Absent a sustained break above the $82,500 pivot or a positive outcome from the June 12 event, stablecoin reserves remained depleted and ETFs continued to see outflows.