Bitcoin fell slightly on Thursday, struggling to make headway amid middling capital flows from institutional investors, while the end of a prolonged U.S. government shutdown helped spur some risk appetite. 

The world’s biggest crypto fell 0.6% to $102,775.6 by 00:52 ET (05:52 GMT), largely lagging a mild recovery in altcoin prices. 

Bitcoin ETF flows remain wholly negative, institutional investors seen wary

Spot-listed U.S. Bitcoin exchange-traded funds clocked an outflow of nearly $278 million on Wednesday, and were also nursing a $1.2 billion outflow in the first week of November, data from SoSoValue showed.

While ETFs did see a $247 million inflow over the past seven days, it was only a fraction of the heavy outflows seen through late-October and early-November. 

The outflows come after a $500 billion crypto valuation wipeout in early-October shook institutional faith in crypto, with corporate treasury buyers and ETF operators largely stepping back from the market since. 

This denied the crypto of the capital needed to push its prices higher. 

Sluggish price movement also saw retail traders largely sour towards the crypto, which is usually attractive for speculative investors because of its wild price swings. 

Bitcoin has struggled to break above $110,000 since early-October, and has traded below $105,000 through most of November. The crypto also briefly broke below $100,000 earlier in the month. 

Crypto price today: altcoins drift higher as US government reopens 

Broader crypto prices fared better than Bitcoin on Thursday, as risk appetite took some support from U.S. lawmakers agreeing to end the country’s longest ever government shutdown. 

World no.2 crypto Ether rose 2.6% to $3,530.65, while XRP rose 4.8%. 

BNB and Cardano rose around 0.9% each, while Solana was flat. Among meme tokens, Dogecoin rose 2%, while $TRUMP moved sideways. 

Risk appetite was mildly boosted by U.S. President Donald Trump signing into law a bill to fund the government until at least January 30. This was after the House Of Representatives voted to approve the measure late-Wednesday. 

But the government’s reopening also opens the door to more official economic data releases, which could paint a dour picture of the world’s largest economy, especially in the wake of the shutdown. Trump claimed the shutdown cost the economy $1.5 trillion.