Wall Street’s Fast Money Fled Bitcoin ETFs, Sovereign Funds Stepped In

The investors who sold Bitcoin through its 2026 slump weren't the crowd you might expect.

A Galaxy Research report published Monday found that a handful of hedge funds and banks drove almost all of the institutional selling in U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, while wealth platforms and sovereign funds stepped in to buy.

Institutions that file quarterly 13F reports with the SEC held 355,000 BTC worth of spot ETF shares at the end of September 2025, just before Bitcoin's all-time high. By June 2026, that had fallen to 307,000 BTC, a 14% drop, the report found.

Nine firms account for more than all of that decline: Millennium Management, Brevan Howard, Goldman Sachs, Capula Management, Farallon Capital, D.E. Shaw, Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, Symmetry Investments and Tudor Investment.

Together they cut 68,000 BTC worth of exposure, roughly $5.4 billion at today's prices, trimming their positions by between 29% and 100%. That means the other roughly 2,200 filers added about 20,000 BTC in aggregate, worth roughly $1.6 billion.

Morgan Stanley's wealth management arm, Abu Dhabi's Mubadala and the Abu Dhabi Investment Council were among the buyers. Advisers, family offices, and individuals who don't file 13Fs cut their holdings by just 6.6% while the price fell 49%.

Galaxy head of firmwide research Alex Thorn says the sellers were largely running a trade, not making a bet on Bitcoin. Many used the cash-and-carry strategy: buying spot ETF shares while shorting CME Bitcoin futures to pocket the gap between the two, known as the basis.

That gap has nearly vanished. The front-month basis averaged 7.9% annualized in the 30 days before Bitcoin's high, 3.9 percentage points above three-month Treasury bills. In the 30 days to Oct. 21, it averaged 4.8%, just 0.6 points above bills. After fees, rolling costs and margin, the trade now earns about 1.5 points over cash, the report estimates.

"That arithmetic, not the price, is why the multi-strategy desks left," Thorn wrote.

CFTC data on CME Bitcoin futures tells a similar story. Asset managers' net long position fell from 43,300 BTC in the week of Bitcoin's all-time high to 18,400 BTC, a 57% drop. Leveraged funds' net short, the futures side of the carry trade, shrank by the same proportion, from 71,400 BTC to 30,600 BTC. Open interest is down 28% in Bitcoin terms and 51% in dollar terms.

Contracts further out still offer something. November and December futures priced in 6.3% to 6.5% at the Oct. 21 close, about 2 points over bills before costs. But Thorn argued that the slim edge doesn't pay for the trade's tail risk: in December 2022, the basis inverted to negative 31% annualized.

Bitcoin ETFs Shed Nearly $1 Billion in Two Weeks as Uptober Stays Red

Overall, spot ETF holdings fell just 11% from their October 2025 peak to their July trough while Bitcoin fell 53%. Since the June low, the funds have added 87,000 BTC, which Galaxy calls directional buying rather than carry.

Recent flows have been choppy. Decrypt reported that the ETFs shed nearly $1 billion over two weeks earlier this month before notching their best day in nearly a month on Oct. 19, when BlackRock's IBIT did all the buying. Since then, a three-day, $1 billion inflow run has been followed by heavy outflows. BTF ETF flows once again turned green this week, but in smaller numbers: roughly $286 million in inflows so far.

The 13F data runs through June, so it doesn't capture more recent shifts. Galaxy discloses that it holds Bitcoin.

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