Institutional investors shorting Bitcoin made up 80% of weekly inflows

Institutional investors loaded up on a record $51.4 million worth of investment products offering exposure to shorting the price of Bitcoin (BTC) last week.

According to data from the latest edition of CoinShares’ weekly “Digital Asset Fund Flows” report, there was $64 million worth of inflows for digital asset products between June 27 and July 1, with short BTC funds representing 80% of that figure.

U.S.-based investors accounted for the lion’s share of inflows at $46.2 million, with short-BTC investment products in solid demand after ProShares launched the first-ever U.S.-based short Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) on June 22. The ETF trades under the ticker BITI and offers shorting exposure via futures contracts.

“This highlights investors are adding to long positions at current prices, with the inflows into short-Bitcoin possibly due to first-time accessibility in the US rather than renewed negative sentiment.”

CoinShares also noted that institutional investors from Brazil, Canada, Germany, and Switzerland snapped up a combined $20 million worth of crypto investment products. Sweden partially offset that figure with $1.8 million worth of outflows.

Short BTC products have now seen year-to-date inflows totaling $77.2 million, with that figure placing it behind only multi-asset products and Solana (SOL) products, which have posted $213.5 million and $110.3 worth of inflows so far in 2022.

Looking at the inflows for other digital asset products, those offering exposure to Ether (ETH) generated $4.9 million, marking the second consecutive week of inflows after a lengthy 11-week trend of shedding. However, year-to-date ETH funds are still down with $450.9 million worth of outflows.

The remainder of the inflows was spread across multi-asset funds at $4.4 million, while SOL, Polkadot (DOT), Cardano (ADA), and BTC products also posted minor inflows of $1 million, $700,000, $600,000, and $600,000 respectively.

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The surge in short BTC fund inflows last week also follows from the prior week when there was $423 million worth of outflows for digital asset products, the highest amount ever on CoinShares’ records. Notably, short BTC funds escaped the carnage that week, posting $15.3 million worth of inflows, while BTC products saw significant outflows of $453 million.