Summary
Samuel Msiska frames the finding as a pair of near-identical shocks with opposite responses.
Over 36 hours on 4-5 February, Bitcoin fell 17.5% and stablecoin inflows on simpleswap.io ran 600% above their weekly average in a single day.
Over 70 hours from 1-4 June, Bitcoin fell 15.7% and the same flows came in 9% below average.
Two drawdowns, four months apart, separated by less than two percentage points of depth — and responses differing by more than six hundred.
The tempting explanation is that traders had less to fear by summer, and the sentiment data refuses it.
The Crypto Fear & Greed Index printed 5 during the February episode, its lowest ever reading, and the market gave nobody reason to relax afterwards: spot volume on the top centralized exchanges fell from about $9.5 trillion in the second half of 2025 to roughly $4.65 trillion.
The statistical core is a correlation that flips sign.
Through the first quarter, weekly net stablecoin flow correlated with the level of Bitcoin at −0.54 — price down, money into safety, exactly as the textbook says.
From April through June the same coefficient reads +0.18.
Stefan Lauer, Head of Infrastructure at SimpleSwap, supplies the reading the piece is built on: the first drawdown of a cycle is news and people act on news, while the third of comparable size is weather.
What makes this more than a single platform's observation is the corroboration — the SimpleSwap report sets its swap flows against public market benchmarks and rival platforms' data, showing a part of the market that order books do not capture.
“The first drawdown of a cycle is news, and people act on news. The third one of comparable size is weather.”
Key Takeaways
- February: Bitcoin −17.5%, stablecoin inflows 600% above average in a single day.
- June: Bitcoin −15.7%, the same flows 9% below average.
- The Fear & Greed Index printed 5 in February, its lowest reading on record.
- Stablecoin flow correlation with Bitcoin flipped from −0.54 in Q1 to +0.18 from April to June.
- Spot volume on top exchanges fell from about $9.5 trillion to $4.65 trillion half on half.
- Swap flows capture behaviour that order books do not.







