Investors Exit Bitcoin Short Funds at Record Pace as Sentiment Improves

Investors pulled $23 million out of short-Bitcoin funds at a record pace last week, although sentiment is still decidedly negative.

2 min read

May 9, 2023

The bears appear to be out and about, with three straight weeks of negative sentiment among institutional investors. Digital asset investment products saw outflows of $54 million dollars last week, according to a new report by CoinShares. That's a marked improvement from the $72 million outflows seen the last week of April.

Digital asset investment firm CoinShares follows the investment activity of important exchange-traded products, mutual funds, and over-the-counter (OTC) trusts, in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and other altcoins and publishes its findings in a weekly report.

From outside the U.S. comes the largest selling pressure, with Germany and Canada seeing $27 million and $20 million dollars worth of outflows, respectively. Fund issuers 3iQ Corp in Canada and CoinShares Physical in Europe accounted for the majority of the outflows.

Head of Research for CoinShares, James Butterfill stated that while volumes for the broader cryptocurrency industry are at half what they were at the beginning of 2023, interest in investment products is trending 16% what they were this time last year.

Bitcoin continues to be the main source of selling for large investors over the past week, nearing $32 million dollars in outflows. Despite sentiment in the United States turning positive, the asset actually saw record weekly short interest of $23 million, mainly from European and Canadian funds.

Activity in altcoins has been barren over the past week, with Ethereum seeing $2.3 million dollars worth of outflows, and Solana seeing $3.4 million worth of deposits. That's the second largest weekly inflow of capital into SOL-based funds over the past twelve months.

Recent selling is also in line with a survey from Goldman Sachs, showing that interest in the cryptocurrency market appears to be waning from the ultra rich.

As of writing, however, despite outflows marking institutional activity, Bitcoin’s price has remained reasonably stable with a -1.6% loss over the past 30 days according to Coingecko.

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