Investors Are Shorting Bitcoin, Ethereum in Record Numbers

More institutional investors than ever are betting on the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies going down, according to a Monday report from CoinShares. 

Institutional investor sentiment was “deeply negative” last week, according to the report, as short product inflows represented 75% of the total inflows—the largest inflow on record. 

Short products allow investors to short cryptocurrency (bet on the price of an asset going down). In the case of last week, investors flocked to put their money on the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum continuing to decline. 

The report said that assets under management in crypto investment products also hit a two-year low of $22 billion, “suggesting on aggregate sentiment was deeply negative for the asset class.”

And it noted that last week more investors than ever before poured money into short-Ethereum investment products—a sum of $14 million. 

CoinShares added that the interest in short products was “likely being a direct result of the ongoing fallout from the FTX collapse.”

The CoinShares report added that investors cashed out $6 million in altcoins last week—mostly Solana, XRP, Binance and Polygon.

The already struggling crypto market has been battered by the news this month that FTX, once one of the most popular crypto exchanges, lost billions of dollars of investors’ cash in a highly-publicized crash. 

FTX was allegedly using client money to make risky investment bets through Alameda Research, a trading firm founded by the exchange’s CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

After a bank run, the company was forced to admit it did not hold one-to-one reserves of customer assets, which culminated in a freezing of withdrawals and subsequent bankruptcy filing.

A document filed Saturday by FTX showed the exchange owes $3.1 billion to its top 50 creditors. 

At the time of writing, the price of Bitcoin was down 3.5% in 24 hours, trading hands at $15,998; Ethereum was priced at $1,105, a 6% dip in the past day.