A column that only reports declines is not reading the data, it is confirming a view. This week the institutional categories added in both CME contracts, and the shape of the addition is worth as much attention as the direction.
+762
Weekly change, asset managers in bitcoin futures
+915
Weekly change, asset managers in ether futures
+6,187
Bitcoin net position after the addition
+1,360
Ether net position after the addition
Source: CFTC Commitments of Traders, Traders in Financial Futures, futures only. Prices are Coinbase daily closes. Computed by Institutional Asset Journal.
Both legs moved, which narrows the explanation
Leveraged funds are net −11,738 contracts in bitcoin and −13,593 in ether, in both cases a larger short than the week before. Asset managers added long and leveraged funds added short, in the same week, in both contracts.
That is the signature of a carry trade being put back on. The two categories are the two legs of one position, so they grow together when the spread between futures and spot widens enough to pay for the capital, and they shrink together when it does not. A directional shift would show one leg growing while the other did not.
The two legs, bitcoin
Solid line: asset managers’ net position. Dashed line: leveraged funds’ net position. Contracts, weekly.
Source: CFTC Commitments of Traders, Traders in Financial Futures, futures only. Prices are Coinbase daily closes. Computed by Institutional Asset Journal.
What it does not establish
One week is one week. The count of institutions holding a reportable long in bitcoin futures is 10, which is inside the range the contract has held all year, so no new participant has arrived. An addition made by the same small group of participants is a resizing, and resizings reverse.
Open interest is 23,402 contracts, +6% on the year. The level of institutional positioning remains −69% from its 2024 peak. This week changes the direction of the last reading, not the position of the year.
A column that only reports declines is not reading the data, it is confirming a view.
Institutional Asset Journal
The thing to watch next
Whether the addition persists across two or three reports, and whether the trader count moves with it. Positioning that rises on a stable participant count is the existing holders adjusting to funding. Positioning that rises alongside more reporting institutions is the only pattern in this data that would support an adoption claim, and it has not appeared this year.
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. The series is rebuilt from source each week; the CFTC restates prior weeks on occasion and restatements are carried through rather than footnoted.
