The useful weeks in a positioning series are the violent ones, because that is when the difference between a held position and a forced one becomes visible. Bitcoin has just had three of them.
−21%
Bitcoin between 13 January 2026 and 3 February 2026
−14%
Change in asset managers’ net futures position over the same weeks
+6,302
Asset manager net position, contracts
−11,425
Leveraged fund net position, the other side
Source: CFTC Commitments of Traders, Traders in Financial Futures, futures only. Prices are Coinbase daily closes. Computed by Institutional Asset Journal.
What forced selling looks like
A liquidation in a futures market has a signature. Open interest falls sharply, because positions are being closed rather than transferred. The reduction concentrates in the leveraged categories, which run the tightest risk limits. And the trader count falls, because participants leave the contract entirely rather than resizing.
None of the three is present. Open interest is 23,044 contracts against 22,168 at the start of the year. 123 traders are still reporting. The asset manager net position moved from +7,349 to +6,302, which is a trim rather than an exit.
Asset managers’ net position through the drawdown
Net long minus short, in contracts, weekly. The price fell through the last three points; the position did not follow it down.
Source: CFTC Commitments of Traders, Traders in Financial Futures, futures only. Prices are Coinbase daily closes. Computed by Institutional Asset Journal.
The reading, and its limit
On the evidence the regulated institutional book absorbed the move rather than causing it. That is a real finding about a real market and it is worth stating plainly, because the commentary during a fall of this size defaults to the assumption that institutions are selling.
The limit is equally real. This is one venue. An allocator that sold a spot exchange traded product holding while leaving its futures hedge in place would appear in this report as somebody who did nothing. The report cannot see the position it was hedging, so a stable futures line is consistent with several different things happening underneath it.
The commentary during a fall of this size defaults to the assumption that institutions are selling. In the regulated market, they were not.
Institutional Asset Journal
Who did move
Leveraged funds are net −11,425 contracts, still carrying the short side of the market. Dealers are net +4,078. Non-reportable participants, everyone below the CFTC threshold, are net −40.
The category that changed most in proportional terms is the count of asset managers reporting a short position, which now stands at 11 against 6 on the long side. Hedging demand rises in a drawdown, and it is showing up as more institutions holding a short leg rather than as fewer holding a long one.
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.
