CoinShares Report Shows Major Outflows From Bitcoin Short Funds

As the price of bitcoin BTC$74,215.94 last week dropped to its lowest level since 2020, investors trimmed their positions in funds designed to profit from further declines in the cryptocurrency.

Investors redeemed a net $5.8 million from short bitcoin funds in the seven days through June 17, the crypto asset manager CoinShares wrote Monday in a report. (A "short" position in financial markets is a bet on a price decline.) At the beginning of the week, assets under management (AUM) in these funds had hit an all-time high of $64 million.

The retreat from the short bitcoin funds might be "suggesting negative sentiment is close to its peak," CoinShares said.

Overall, digital-asset investment products saw net outflows of $39 million last week, according to CoinShares. Total AUM dipped to $36.3 billion, the lowest since February 2021.

Underscoring the notion that some investors were buying the dip, bitcoin funds saw inflows totaling $28 million.

Funds focused on ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency, suffered an 11th straight week of outflows, partly driven by investor worries about the Ethereum merge. ETH outflows totaled $70 million last week and brought year-to-date outflows to $459 million.

Solana-focused funds may have benefited from ether doubts, however, seeing inflows of $700,000 last week and $109 million year-to-date.