CoinShares reported that investors poured $1,465 million into the top crypto funds, with ProShares capturing $1,237 million of the total and of which $1.45 billion went into bitcoin funds.
With each of those contracts worth the equivalent of five bitcoin – or about $321,300 as of Tuesday at close – the net capital inflow from retail investors into these contracts rose by $183 million.
Hedge funds have roughly bore the brunt of providing sell interest to all bitcoin futures buyers, with a large increase in OI in spread, meaning that an entity is both buying and selling that number of contracts – that is that they are ‘making markets’ through what is known as the carry trade: buying the commodity in the spot or cash market and selling it on the futures market.
While the CFTC’s Sunday data release includes activity through Tuesday October 19, the latest CME data through Friday Oct 22 shows that OI continued to rise by a very large 3,515 contracts above Tuesday’s total – another record high.
The retail-driven boost in CME BTC OI increase comes in addition to the rise in the roughly 4,000 long BTC contracts that commercial firms snatched up in the past few weeks.
In some ways, these retail investors and institutions participating in last week’s rally simply bought a hot commodity knowing there will be various more buyers – e.g., new ETF issuers – bidding up that commodity’s price.
I’ve the good fortune of having a Wall Street analyst background, and have written on topics related to wealth management, retail brokerage, and digital assets.