Analysis: Claims of the "Largest ETH Short Position in History" Are Greatly Exaggerated

BlockBeats News, July 5 — David Duong, Head of Institutional Research at a certain exchange, published an analysis stating, “The so-called ‘largest ETH short position in history’ is actually a serious exaggeration... So what is the real situation? (As shown in the attached chart: CFTC leveraged funds’ ETH short positions based on cash margin)

Spot ETH ETFs saw robust growth in June, with net inflows reaching $1.16 billion—an unprecedented surge for this type of product, mainly driven by increasing institutional participation in CME basis trades.

In CME’s ETH futures, leveraged funds’ short positions rose from $466 million in early May to $1.6 billion as of June 24, an increase of $1.14 billion—which, interestingly, is very close to the net inflows into spot ETFs. Why is this the case?

This is because the annualized basis yield of ETH futures relative to spot increased from an average of 6% in February this year to 8%–9% in May and June, attracting more institutional investors to engage in spot buying and futures selling arbitrage trades.”