Institutional investor Bitcoin Sentiment turned pessimistic on Friday as short Bitcoin inflows hit an all-time high, according to a new report from CoinShares.
Card Bitcoin funds give investors exposure to derivatives, such as futures and options, which bet against the price of Bitcoin. While investors can enter into these 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 a record high of $172 million under management, according to the report. CoinShares has been tracking Bitcoin short funds since the first launched, 21Shares Short Bitcoin on Six Swiss Exchange, in January 2020.
Bitcoin funds now have $16 billion under management. That’s the lowest it’s been since late June, James Butterfill, director of research for CoinShares, wrote, writing that last week’s trends show a continued “tepid investor appetite for digital assets.”
However, there has still been some bullish Bitcoin behavior among institutions. MicroStrategy bought 301 Bitcoins, worth about $6 million when it was announced last week. But MicroStrategy shareholders weren’t as enthusiastic about the news as executive chairman Michael Saylor.
The MSTR share price fell 6% on the day of the announcement. On Monday, MSTR traded at $198.98, close to trading at more than $200 and making up ground it lost on the Bitcoin news from last week.
There was some good news for Ethereum-based funds, which saw net inflows totaling $7 million. It is the first positive sentiment since the Ethereum merger. The weeks before and after the merger, which took place on September 15, saw Ethereum fund outflows of $62 million and $15 million, respectively.
Both Ethereum and Bitcoin have struggled over the past week, with Bitcoin still below the $20,000 mark on Monday, 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 merger.
One of the major factors affecting 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 before the merger.
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