A handful of hedge funds and banks drove almost all institutional selling of U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, according to Galaxy Research, while wealth platforms and sovereign funds bought. The firm attributes most of the selling to the unwinding of the basis trade rather than to a bearish view on Bitcoin.
Who sold and who bought
Nine named firms cut their exposure by 68,000 BTC, worth $5.4 billion at today’s prices, Galaxy said. Millennium Management, Brevan Howard and Goldman Sachs were among them. Their reductions ranged from 29 to 100 percent of their positions.
Roughly 2,200 other 13F filers added about 20,000 BTC, or $1.6 billion, in aggregate. Advisers, family offices and individuals who do not file 13Fs trimmed their holdings by 6.6 percent.
The basis trade and its unwinding
The sellers had largely run cash-and-carry trades, buying spot ETF shares and shorting CME Bitcoin futures to capture the basis. That premium narrowed from 7.9 percent annualized in the 30 days before Bitcoin’s high to 4.8 percent in the 30 days to Oct. 21.
Spot ETF holdings fell 11 percent from the October 2025 peak to the July trough, while Bitcoin fell 53 percent over the same period. Since the June low, funds have added 87,000 BTC.
“That arithmetic, not the price, is why the multi-strategy desks left,” said Alex Thorn, Galaxy’s head of firmwide research. Galaxy discloses that it holds Bitcoin itself. The 13F data runs only through June.
Related: Bitcoin ETFs draw $526.7 million as Ether and Solana funds bleed
Source: Galaxy Research
