FTX crisis leads to record inflows into short-investment products

November 22, 2022 Coin Telegraph

AUM

The aftermath of FTX’s collapse has soured crypto investor sentiment with "record” inflows into short-investment products last week, said CoinShares.

Institutional investors have responded to the negative sentiment caused by FTX’s collapse, with record institutional inflows into crypto-focused short-investment products.

According to CoinShares’ chief strategy officer James Butterfill, 75% of the total inflows by institutional crypto investors for the week ending Nov. 18 were placed in short investment products — essentially a bet that crypto prices will decline.

Butterfill said the takeup of short positions by investors is likely “a direct result of the ongoing fallout from the FTX collapse,” while the total assets under management (AUM) for institutional investors is now at $22 billion — the lowest in two years.

Over the week, $14 million was poured into short-ETH investment products. CoinShares said it was “the largest weekly inflow on record.”

CoinShares cited “renewed uncertainty” over Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade slated for Sep. 2023 and mentioned that the sizeable amount of ETH held by the FTX exploiter as possible reasons for the negative sentiment.

Inflows into short investment products for Bitcoin (BTC) hit $18.4 million. Bitcoin short products were reported to have an AUM of $173 million coming close to the $186 million high.

Investors are also seemingly dropping altcoins with Solana (SOL), XRP (XRP), BNB (BNB), and Polygon (MATIC) product outflows totaling $6 million.

The newly reported inflows are a slight change from the week prior which saw the largest inflows in 14 weeks to crypto products totaling $42 million, although short Bitcoin products already started to see inflows of $12.6 million and blockchain equity products recorded the largest weekly outflow since May 2022.

Meanwhile, the ripple effect of investor distrust for centralized exchanges is taking hold in the traditional finance market with Coinbase posting an all-time low share price on Nov. 21.

The crypto exchange’s share price dropped 8.9% on the day, slipping to under $41 according to Google Finance. It has now slightly recovered to around $41.20 at the time of writing but continued to trade at a slight 0.19% negative after hours.

Coinbase’s stock price is down almost 88% since it went public on Apr. 16, 2021.

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New hashprice-based derivatives instrument gives Bitcoin miners another way to hedge

October 10, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin mining

Better luck next time? Luxor’s OTC Bitcoin mining derivatives could offer miners “a much needed tool to hedge their mining operations.”

Hedging against downside has always been a challenge for Bitcoin BTC miners, and the current bear market is a perfect example of how energy prices and crypto market volatility can negatively impact miners’ profit margins and their ability to stay solvent.

Oftentimes, institutional and retail traders use BTC-, stablecoin- and U.S. dollar-settled derivatives (options and futures contracts) to create hedging strategies that mitigate downside in Bitcoin price, and now an instrument specific to Bitcoin mining is available to miners.

The Oct. 10 launch of Luxor Hashprice NDF, a non-deliverable forward contract, will allow miners to hedge their exposure to Bitcoin price and the energy costs associated with mining.

According to Luxor Technologies, “hashprice” is the revenue BTC miners earn per unit of hash rate, which is the total computational power deployed by miners processing transactions on a proof-of-work network.

The over-the-counter derivatives contracts are settled using Luxor’s Bitcoin Hashprice Index, and investors can choose to settle in dollar-pegged stablecoins, dollars or BTC. A primary benefit of the instrument is that contract sellers can lock in Bitcoin mining revenue, while contract buyers can tap into the upside potential of Bitcoin mining without the need for physical exposure.

According to Luxor co-founder and CEO Nick Hansen:

“These products are a major step in the Luxor roadmap and something we have analyzed deeply since the company’s genesis; hashprice derivatives are the apotheosis of our vision of hashrate as an asset class, something we’ve been pioneering since we introduced hashprice with the launch of Hashrate Index in 2020.”

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

institutional investors