Bitcoin ETFs Snap 9-Day Inflow Streak, Lloyds and Visa Settle $750,000 in USDC Pilot

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs ended a nine-day streak of $3.1 billion inflows, with $148.7 million in net outflows on Wednesday. BlackRock's IBIT and Fidelity's FBTC led the day's outflows, while Bitwise's BITB had $13.6 million in net outflows. This marks a significant shift in investor sentiment, ending a period of sustained interest in these funds. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs have generated over $57 billion in cumulative net inflows since their January 2024 debut, with more than $100 billion in assets under management. Meanwhile, Lloyds and Visa successfully settled $750,000 in payment obligations using USDC in a live cross-border pilot, highlighting the growing adoption of stablecoins in financial transactions. The pilot focused on settlement between financial institutions rather than customer payments, with the funds reaching Visa in under an hour. In related news, NEAR Intents suffered a $3.8 million exploit, but the affected users will be fully compensated, according to NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin. The company is working with law enforcement and blockchain analytics platforms to trace the stolen funds, which were transferred to KuCoin and bridged to Bitcoin. Additionally, Hyperliquid Policy Center and Circle are pushing for changes to EU crypto rules as part of the European Commission's review of MiCA, specifically seeking to treat crypto perpetual futures as derivatives under MiFID II rather than MiCA. They also want to preserve multi-issuance, where an EU-authorized entity and a foreign-regulated affiliate issue the same global stablecoin. Circle also wants to replace the requirement for stablecoin issuers to keep at least 30% of reserves in bank deposits, or 60% for significant tokens, with a less rigid liquidity requirement.