Nine desks cut 68,000 BTC of Bitcoin ETF holdings, Galaxy finds

Most of the institutional selling in US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds came from nine fast-money desks, which together cut about 68,000 BTC of exposure — roughly $5.4 billion at current prices — between September 2025 and June 2026, according to ForexCrunch’s coverage of a Galaxy Research report.

The desks named were Millennium Management, Brevan Howard, Goldman Sachs, Capula, Farallon, D.E. Shaw, Schonfeld, Symmetry and Tudor, trimmed by between 29% and 100% of their positions. Galaxy published the findings on Oct. 26; Decrypt reported the figures on Oct. 28 and described the buyers stepping in as wealth platforms and sovereign funds.

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Key facts

• Firms filing quarterly 13F reports held 355,000 BTC worth of spot Bitcoin ETF shares at the end of September 2025 and 307,000 BTC by June 2026, a 14% decline.
• The nine desks’ combined sale exceeds the whole 48,000 BTC drop across 13F filers, meaning roughly 2,200 other filers were net buyers, adding about 20,000 BTC.
• The front-month futures basis averaged 7.9% annualised in the 30 days before Bitcoin’s high, 3.9 points above three-month Treasury bills, then 4.8% in the 30 days to Oct. 21, just 0.6 points above bills.
• Asset managers’ net long in CME Bitcoin futures fell 57% to 18,400 BTC, while leveraged funds’ net short halved to 30,600 BTC from 71,400 BTC.
• Morgan Stanley’s wealth management arm, Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala and the Abu Dhabi Investment Council were among the buyers, per Decrypt.

A trade, not a view on Bitcoin

Galaxy’s head of firmwide research, Alex Thorn, traced the selling to the cash-and-carry trade, which buys spot ETF shares and shorts CME Bitcoin futures to collect the premium of futures over spot. After fees, rolling costs and margin, Galaxy estimates the strategy now earns about 1.5 points over cash. Thorn’s report said that arithmetic, rather than price, explains why the multi-strategy desks left.

He also flagged tail risk: the basis inverted to negative 31% annualised in December 2022, turning the position loss-making. November and December futures priced 6.3% to 6.5% at the Oct. 21 close, about 2 points over bills before costs.

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Futures positioning tells the same story. CME open interest is down 28% in Bitcoin terms and 51% in dollar terms, and Decrypt reported that leveraged funds’ net short shrank by the same 57% proportion as asset managers’ net long.

The composition of the buyer side

Spot ETF holdings fell only 11% from their October 2025 peak to their July trough while Bitcoin fell 53%, and the funds have added 87,000 BTC since the June low, which Galaxy characterises as directional buying rather than carry. Decrypt added that advisers, family offices and individuals who do not file 13Fs cut holdings by 6.6% while the price fell 49% — a figure ForexCrunch’s account does not include.

Note two caveats: Galaxy’s firm disclosures list a Bitcoin holding, and the 13F dataset stops at June 2026, so it does not show current positioning. The same period contains a separate market event: Cointribune reported that Wall Street erased more than $470 billion in market capitalisation after core PCE inflation came in at 2.8% year on year and the Federal Reserve held rates, while Bitcoin held above $80,000.

Why it matters

The data reframes this year’s ETF outflows as the unwinding of a funding trade rather than an institutional verdict on Bitcoin, which matters for how allocators read fund flow figures. Galaxy’s figures show the 13F cohort shrinking far less than the price, with a narrow group of desks accounting for more than the entire decline. Flows have already shifted: Decrypt and ForexCrunch both cite about $286 million of ETF inflows in the week beginning Oct. 26, after nearly $1 billion was shed over the previous two weeks.

What to watch

The next scheduled CME futures settlements and the quarterly 13F filings that follow the June 2026 cutoff will show whether the desks stay out or rebuild carry positions. The Federal Reserve’s December meeting is the other variable, given the inflation reading Cointribune reported.

This is not financial advice; cryptocurrency and futures markets are volatile and prices can move sharply in either direction.

Written by

StockPil Editorial

The StockPil Editorial desk covers stock markets, business, finance, forex and crypto. Our AI-assisted newsroom builds each article from published, linked sources, checks it for accuracy before it goes live, and our editors review published articles and correct anything that needs it.

Sources: ForexCrunch, Decrypt, Cointribune