Bitcoin's February 6 correction triggered a massive exchange inflow spike, then something unusual happened: the flows cooled almost immediately.
12,000 BTC Flooded Exchanges in One Day. Then It Stopped.
Bitcoin's slide below $60,000 on February 6 didn't just break a psychological level — it triggered one of the sharpest de-risking episodes visible in on-chain data. According to CryptoQuant, whale deposits to Binance alone spiked to approximately 12,000 BTC that day, compared to a monthly average of roughly 1,000 BTC. That's a twelve-fold increase in a single session, reflecting broad panic across both retail and institutional segments as the 52% correction from Bitcoin's October all-time high intensified.
Exchange inflows are typically read as a precursor to selling pressure. When investors move coins from self-custody wallets to exchanges, they're preparing to liquidate. The February 6 spike fit that pattern perfectly — it coincided with Bitcoin falling from $67,000 to $60,062 intraday, liquidations crossing $2.5 billion in 24 hours, and the Crypto Fear & Greed Index collapsing to 5, the lowest reading in its history.
But what happened next is what separates this event from typical capitulation. The inflows cooled almost as rapidly as they surged. Within days, the flow patterns normalized, and seven separate trading days since early February have recorded more than 5,000 BTC in daily whale inflows, but none approached the February 6 extreme. That suggests the initial rush to exchanges represented a concentrated panic event, not the start of sustained distribution.
More revealing is what was happening on the other side of the ledger. On the same day exchange inflows peaked, 66,940 BTC moved into accumulation addresses — wallets that historically don't redistribute quickly. According to CryptoQuant and Glassnode, this marked the largest single-day whale accumulation since 2022. In the week that followed, wallets holding over 1,000 BTC added more than $4 billion in exposure.
So two opposing forces were active simultaneously: some holders were dumping into exchanges under stress, while others were absorbing that supply and self-custodying. The divergence suggests different investor cohorts responding to the same price action with opposite strategies.
U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $371 million in net inflows on February 6, even as sentiment hit historic lows. Earlier in the month, they saw nearly $562 million in a single session. This institutional buying continued despite the correction, a behavioral pattern that didn't exist in previous cycles before ETF adoption.
The question now is whether the rapid cooling in exchange inflows signals exhaustion of selling pressure or just a temporary lull. If accumulation wallets remain dormant and exchange reserves stabilize, the February 6 spike could mark a localized panic washout. If those wallets start redistributing or exchange inflows resume at elevated levels, the thesis changes.
What's clear from the data is that the panic was real, concentrated, and then it stopped. Whether it's finished depends on what those accumulation wallets do next.