CoinShares Report Shows Major Outflows From Bitcoin Short Funds

As the price of bitcoin (BTC) last week dropped to its lowest level since 2020, investors trimmed their positions in funds designed to profit from further declines in the cryptocurrency.

Investors redeemed a net $5.8 million from short bitcoin funds in the seven days through June 17, the crypto asset manager CoinShares wrote Monday in a report. (A “short” position in financial markets is a bet on a price decline.) At the beginning of the week, assets under management (AUM) in these funds had hit an all-time high of $64 million.

The retreat from the short bitcoin funds might be “suggesting negative sentiment is close to its peak,” CoinShares said.

Overall, digital-asset investment products saw net outflows of $39 million last week, according to CoinShares. Total AUM dipped to $36.3 billion, the lowest since February 2021.

Underscoring the notion that some investors were buying the dip, bitcoin funds saw inflows totaling $28 million.

Funds focused on ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency, suffered an 11th straight week of outflows, partly driven by investor worries about the Ethereum merge. ETH outflows totaled $70 million last week and brought year-to-date outflows to $459 million.

Solana-focused funds may have benefited from ether doubts, however, seeing inflows of $700,000 last week and $109 million year-to-date.