I hope you are not making this into a case of correlation = causation but as history indicates, there is always a hype before or during the long-awaited event. Especially when it comes to ETFs. I cannot think of a reason why ETF launches (or similar product launches) would cause a rapid sell-off, other than to superficially push down the price.
I think, that in the long term, Bitcoin's value will go up thanks to the ETF. But in the short term, I think we will see a unjustified speculative price based on hype alone. So good news for any hodler but bad news for traders with shaky hands.
We just have to wait and see what happens. Only time will tell.
Isn't this same sort of correlation = causation you are making, but with added context? As you said, in the short-term there is unjustified price speculation to the upside, which is more than enough to lead to a sell-off as we have seen with CME launch, Bakkt as well as Pro-Shares. So there is effectively a causation for this correlation which is the price speculation to put it simply, instead of being completely random.
What I meant is that although there are signs pointing to an incoming ETF hype having a similar effect on the price of BTC as it did in the past, we cannot make predictions on the price action just yet, because there is not enough historical data to make a statistical prediction on this specific event. We have had only a precious few BTC ETF filings in the past so any perceived correlations may turn out to be nothing but coincidence.
But what we know to be true and tested many times is the fact that whenever there is a positive hype, there is overblown speculative price growth.
I'm not even talking about some short-term correction either. With CME launch it was the top of the 2017 bull market, with Bakkt is was part of a 50%+ correction, and Pro-Shares was the top of the 2021 bull market. If in each of these cases there was a minor correction or otherwise price consolidation then sure, it'd be more or less irrelevant, but as stated, I'm talking about 50%+ price corrections, admittedly after 100%+ increases.
A launch of a new ETF not dumping the price would effectively be the first time in Bitcoin's history that price hasn't dumped after a major "product" launch. This is kind of my point here. Sure you can say that the three examples I've given are completely random and unrelated to considerable price declines, but it seems like a distinct pattern so far that has yet to be broken as a concept.
As I said, unless a patterns keeps repeating a certain amount of times, at minimum, it should not be considered a correlative pattern just yet. In fact, this last ETF filing is very different (or so they say) to the past BTC ETF filings. That alone might give one the impression that the BTC price action will be unpredictable.
When in doubt, Hodl.