Ether and bitcoin are usually sized as one allocation and they have not been behaving as one. The CFTC breaks the two contracts out separately, on identical definitions, which makes the comparison exact rather than impressionistic.
| Category | Bitcoin, net | Ether, net |
|---|---|---|
| Asset managers | +7,252 | +793 |
| Leveraged funds | −11,558 | −11,450 |
| Dealers | +4,390 | +10,850 |
| Open interest | 24,541 | 36,570 |
| Reporting traders | 135 | 107 |
Asset managers’ net position in CME ether futures
Net long minus short, in contracts, weekly.
Source: CFTC Commitments of Traders, Traders in Financial Futures, futures only. Prices are Coinbase daily closes. Computed by Institutional Asset Journal.
One trade, counted twice
The long-standing structure of this market is asset managers long and leveraged funds short, and those are not two opposing views. They are the two legs of a cash and carry trade, in which one party holds the asset and sells the future against it to capture the spread. Reading the leveraged short as a bearish bet is the most common error made with this data.
How this was measured
- Figures are taken from the CFTC’s Commitments of Traders release, Traders in Financial Futures, futures only. That report covers positions held at the close on a Tuesday and is published the following Friday at 15:30 Eastern, so every reading here is three days old on the day it appears. Net positions exclude spread holdings, which the CFTC reports separately. Notional values apply the CME contract multiplier and the Coinbase daily close on the report date. Restatements by the CFTC are carried through rather than footnoted.
