Institutional investor BitcoinBitcoin sentiment turned pessimistic on Friday as short Bitcoin inflows hit an all-time high, according to a new report from CoinShares.
Short Bitcoin funds give investors exposure to derivatives, like futures and options, that bet against the price of Bitcoin. While investors can enter into those contracts directly, the CoinShares report tracks the flow of funds for exchange-traded products.
By the end of last week, short Bitcoin investment products hit an all-time high of $172 million assets under management, according to the report. CoinShares has been tracking Bitcoin short funds since the first one launched, 21Shares Short Bitcoin on the Six Swiss Exchange, in January 2020.
AD
AD
Bitcoin funds now have $16 billion assets under management. That’s the lowest it’s been since the end of June, wrote James Butterfill, CoinShares director of research, writing that last week’s trends show a continued “tepid investor appetite for digital assets.”
There’s still been some bullish Bitcoin behavior among institutions, though. MicroStrategy bought 301 Bitcoin, worth approximately $6 million when it was announced last week. But MicroStrategy shareholders weren’t as enthusiastic about the news as executive chairman Michael Saylor.
MicroStrategy has purchased an additional 301 bitcoins for ~$6.0 million at an average price of ~$19,851 per #bitcoin. As of 9/19/22 @MicroStrategy holds ~130,000 bitcoins acquired for ~$3.98 billion at an average price of ~$30,639 per bitcoin.https://t.co/5kYW98ij4I
The MSTR share price dropped 6% on the day of the announcement. On Monday, MSTR was trading at $198.98, close to trading at more than $200 and making up the ground it lost on the Bitcoin news from last week.
There was a little bit of good news for Ethereum-based funds, which saw net inflows totaling $7 million. That’s the first positive sentiment since the Ethereum merge. The weeks before and of the merge, which took place on September 15, Ethereum funds saw outflows of $62 million and $15 million, respectively.
AD
AD
Both Ethereum and Bitcoin have struggled during the past week, with Bitcoin still below the $20,000 mark on Monday and trading at $19,082.92, according to CoinGecko. Ethereum was trading at $1,318.57 on Monday afternoon, still well below the $1,600 price it last hit before the merge.
One of the big factors impacting the Ethereum price has been miners selling their ETH. Data from OKLink, which analyzes data from a dozen mining pools, showed that miners sold $20 million worth of ETH in the week leading up to the merge.
Stay on top of crypto news, get daily updates in your inbox.
The 2022 Crypto Crash
In Summer 2022, crypto markets slumped alongside global financial markets. Here's everything you need to know.
There’s a wry humor in the fact that Bitcoin has at times been very closely correlated with traditional markets.
Bitcoiners generally prefer that BTC not have a high correlation with traditional assets, like stocks and bonds. After all, one of the core tenets of the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization—$379 billion as of this writing, according to CoinGecko—is that it bypasses traditional finance.
That’s why self-avowed Bitcoin fans, like Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss,...
People moving on from the “speculative bubble” that is crypto, NFTs, and meme stocks is a positive sign for the U.S. economy, according to Wall Street heavyweight Ken Griffin.
Miami-based trading firm Citadel Securities’ founder said in a Wednesday interview with CNBC that government handouts in 2020, in response to the COVID-19 lockdowns, led to investors pumping their cash into “speculative assets” like NFTs, crypto, and meme stocks.
So-called meme stocks, shares of companies that gain a fol...
Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao thinks the Bitcoin bear market is good for crypto.
In a conversation with Messari CEO Ryan Selkis at the Mainnet conference Wednesday, CZ—who connected remotely via video chat—said a four-year crypto market cycle is normal and that a bear market is healthier in the long term than a seemingly never-ending upward trend.
“Price corrections are actually good,” CZ said, adding that investors shouldn’t look at token prices as signs of how the crypto market is doing.
In...
