Did BlackRock just dump $1 billion in Bitcoin ahead of today’s Fed speech?

On October 14, social media was set ablaze by claims that BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) had “dumped” nearly $1 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) just hours before Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s latest speech.

At first glance, data retrieved by Finbold from Arkham seems to support the rumor. In the past 12 hours, IBIT-linked wallets processed a series of transfers totaling 9,376 BTC, worth more than $1.04 billion at current prices. But a closer look reveals a far more nuanced picture than the headline-grabbing “dump” suggests.

Breaking down the BTC transfers

According to Arkham’s entity tracking, IBIT wallets executed two sets of outflows. Roughly 8,673 BTC were sent 12 hours ago in 28 uniform 300-BTC tranches and one 272.78-BTC odd lot. These coins did not land on exchange deposit addresses but rather to a series of unlabeled bc1q addresses, wallets that analysts interpret as custodial storage or internal rotations.

By contrast, the past two hours saw 703.7 BTC routed directly to Coinbase Prime Deposit addresses, equivalent to about $77.7 million. This subset is more likely tied to ETF redemptions or liquidity provisioning.

Bitcoin ETF flow data tells a different story

It’s worth remembering how ETF plumbing works. When IBIT sees investor redemptions, BTC moves out of the fund’s custodian to authorized participants (APs). Those coins may hit Coinbase Prime (IBIT’s custodian is Coinbase) for settlement or market-making, but an on-chain transfer is not proof of an immediate market sale.

We’ve seen similar Coinbase Prime deposits from BlackRock before, for instance, 340 BTC and 49,608 ETH on September 29, that were framed as treasury moves or rebalancing, not dumps.

So, did BlackRock “dump $1 billion” in a single shot? The math doesn’t line up with that claim, and the destination mix on-chain shows both exchange and non-exchange outputs. The most defensible reading is that IBIT processed sizable, mostly 300-BTC lots tied to creations/redemptions and internal reallocation. Some coins hit Coinbase Prime for settlement and liquidity, alongside large transfers to unlabeled wallets.