Institutional Demand Underpins BTC’s Best Month Since April 2025
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Strong institutional demand has helped underpin a close to 12% rally in BTC’s spot price month-to-date, while derivative markets continue to fade the rally.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw their longest consecutive inflow streak since the 10/10 liquidation event, vacuuming more than $2.1B worth of bitcoins.
Meanwhile, Strategy and BitMine have continued to showcase their insatiable appetite for bitcoin and ether, respectively:
Strategy made its largest purchase since November 2024 earlier this month
BitMine recently purchased over 100,000 Ether.
April is also on track to break 5 straight months of Spot Ethereum ETF outflows.
Despite the bullish sentiment in spot markets however, derivative markets have so far failed to echo the same enthusiasm.
Funding rates in perpetual futures contracts have mostly traded negative, open interest in perp contracts shows little interest in opening new positions, and in options markets, put-call skew is still tilted towards put options.
READ MORE (published April 27): Bitcoin listed among "3 Assets to Watch" this week.
Bitcoin on track for its best month since April 2025
A near-12% rally month-to-date has put BTC on track for its best month over the past year!
Risk-appetite in crypto spot prices rose earlier in the week, coinciding with record highs in US equities after Iran offered the US a new peace deal. That deal proposed a full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, with nuclear negotiations postponed for a later date after both sides lifted their blockades in the vital waterway.
BTC rallied to as much as $79,500 – a twelve-week high, before meeting a sharp wall of resistance just below $80K.
READ MORE (published April 22): Bitcoin hits new 2-month high!
Since then, the spot price has lingered around $76K after it was reported that President Trump rejected Tehran’s peace proposal and told his White House aides to potentially prepare for an extended naval blockade of the Hormuz Strait, with plans for further military action reportedly in the pipeline.
The slow, steady (and almost stealth-like) recovery in BTC over the month of April has not, however, been driven by leverage or exuberance in perpetual futures markets.
Open interest in BTC perp contracts, for example, has been steady over the course of the month, below $4B, while total open interest across several blue-chip tokens has mostly ranged between $6-7B.
That suggests that despite a 3-month high in spot price, traders on Bybit are yet to rush into leveraged perp positions in the hope of capturing further upside in spot price.
We can also look at funding rates to gauge whether traders expect the rally to continue.
DECODE: A consistently positive funding rate indicates that traders are willing to pay a fee for the leveraged long exposure perpetual swap contracts offer – a sign of bullish sentiment and trader expectation of a further rally in spot price.
Much of the spot rally in April, however, has not been accompanied by positive funding rates in BTC or ETH perp contracts, suggesting a lack of conviction from perp traders.
For comparison, see below how the early 2026 spot move towards $100K was backed by a more prolonged period of positive funding rates.
While BTC’s recovery rally in April may not have been driven by speculative leverage position building, it has, however, coincided with strong institutional interest.
Between April 14 and April 24, Spot Bitcoin ETFs had a straight run of 9 consecutive inflow days, purchasing more than $2.1B worth of bitcoins.
The last time Spot Bitcoin ETFs had such a long inflow streak was between Sept 29 and Oct 9, 2025 – just before the historic October 10 liquidation event.
While the past 2 days have seen outflows ...
April is still on track to be the strongest month for Spot Bitcoin ETF net flows since October 2025.
Institutional interest has not, however, been limited to just ETFs.
Strategy, the largest Bitcoin digital asset treasury and the largest institutional holder of BTC, has purchased $4.1B worth of Bitcoin over the course of April.
On April 20, 2026 for example, the firm made its largest purchase since November 2024, acquiring 34,164 bitcoin at a total cost of $2.5B.
The rolling 20-day sum of Spot Bitcoin ETFs and Strategy purchases has more than doubled from $2.9B at the start of April to over $6.5B, and is currently at its highest since October last year.
We see a similar story in Ethereum, too.
ETH spot price is up more than 10% this month, with April on track to break 5 straight months of Spot Ethereum ETF outflows.
Ethereum digital asset treasury firm BitMine recently purchased 101,901 Ethereum, bringing the firm’s total ETH holdings to 4.21% of the total circulated supply. That also marked the firm’s largest purchase since mid-December 2025.
Implied Volatility Dwindles Lower
Similar to perpetual futures markets, we continue to see skepticism from options markets around the longevity of the rally.
Despite spot price trading close to its highest since the US-Iran conflict began 2 months ago, excluding a very brief call-premium in mid-April, the 25-delta put-call skew continues to tilt towards put options.
As we highlighted in a previous edition, the large premium with which put options traded at earlier in the year has subsided in line with the spot price recovery – however, while traders may not have the same urgency to hedge against downside spot moves, they also show signs of limited conviction to chase upside moves.
We also continue to observe a selloff in implied volatility.
Across the entirety of the curve, forward-looking volatility expectations have steadily compressed lower.
7-day ATM IV now trades 10 vol points lower than before the conflict began and has touched a zone which has historically acted as strong support for IV over the past year.
The steady drop in volatility expectations has occurred despite considerable macro uncertainty around a US-Iran peace deal and little sign of a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz in the near term.
DISCLAIMER:
This article is provided for general information and reflects the author’s views only. It does not constitute investment advice, nor an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any financial instruments or digital assets. Your ability to access or use any products or services mentioned may be subject to the laws and regulatory requirements of your jurisdiction.