Net flow is the headline number on most ETF flow dashboards, including ours. It is calculated as gross creations (new shares issued) minus gross redemptions (shares retired) for a single trading session, expressed in dollars at NAV. A spot Bitcoin ETF that took $200 million in creations and $50 million in redemptions on Tuesday had a net inflow of $150 million for that session.
Net flow is the cleanest read on whether new money entered the fund. It is not the same as trading volume — secondary-market trading among existing shareholders does not change shares outstanding and contributes nothing to net flow. Only creations and redemptions do.
At the slate level, “total net flow” aggregates net flow across every fund tracking a given asset. For US-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs, that means summing across IBIT, FBTC, ARKB, BITB, and the rest of the slate. A $400 million net inflow into the BTC slate means the funds collectively added $400 million in new shares that day, even if individual funds offset each other.
Because creations and redemptions settle on a T+1 basis, today’s session prints in tomorrow morning’s issuer feed. The InflowScan dashboard reads any “today” figure as partial until the 10 PM ET massive collector run completes. Aggregates over rolling 7-day or 30-day windows are gated by daily-coverage completeness — a partial day in the window pushes the aggregate back to the last complete day.