Institutional investors, a term used to describe corporate investors, loaded up to the tune of $51.4 million worth of investment products offering exposure to shorting the price of Bitcoin (BTC) last week. This sum is a new record compared to previous weeks.
According to data from the latest edition of CoinShares’ weekly “Digital Asset Fund Flows” report, there was $64 million worth of inflows for digital asset products between June 27 and July 1, with short BTC funds representing 80% of that figure.
United States-based investors accounted for the lion’s share of inflows at $46.2 million, with short-BTC investment products in solid demand after ProShares launched the first-ever U.S.-based short Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) on June 22. The ETF trades under the ticker BITI and offers shorting exposure via futures contracts.
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- CoinShares report reads, “This highlights investors are adding to long positions at current prices, with the inflows into short-Bitcoin possibly due to first-time accessibility (listing of BITI) in the US rather than renewed negative sentiment.”
- CoinShares also noted that institutional investors from Brazil, Canada, Germany and Switzerland snapped up a combined $20 million worth of crypto investment products. Sweden partially offset that figure with $1.8 million worth of outflows.
- Short BTC products have now seen year-to-date inflows totalling $77.2 million, with that figure placing it behind only multi-asset products and Solana (SOL) products, which have posted $213.5 million and $110.3 worth of inflows so far in 2022.
- Looking at the inflows for other digital asset products, those offering exposure to Ether (ETH) generated $4.9 million, marking the second consecutive week of inflows after a lengthy 11-week trend of shedding. However, year-to-date ETH funds are still down with $450.9 million worth of outflows.
- The remainder of the inflows was spread across multi-asset funds at $4.4 million, while SOL, Polkadot (DOT), Cardano (ADA) and BTC products also posted minor inflows of $1 million, $700,000, $600,000, and $600,000, respectively.
The surge in short BTC fund inflows last week also follows from the prior week when there was $423 million worth of outflows for digital asset products, the highest amount ever on CoinShares’ records. Notably, short BTC funds escaped the carnage that week, posting $15.3 million worth of inflows, while BTC products saw significant outflows of $453 million. The data suggests that institutional investors believe that there is still further downside risk due to macroeconomic headwinds.
