Are the Big Players Long or Short Bitcoin?
Every Friday the CFTC, the US futures regulator, publishes exactly how hedge funds and institutions are positioned in CME Bitcoin and Ethereum futures. This page turns that report into one readable chart: who is net long, who is net short, and how it changed, every week back to 2018.
As of the 2026-07-28 report, hedge funds are net short 6.9K CME Bitcoin futures contracts (+1.1K week over week), while institutions are net long 2.3K contracts.
Recent weeks
| Report date | Hedge funds net | Institutions net | Open interest |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-07-28 | -6.9K | +2.3K | 20.0K |
| 2026-07-21 | -7.9K | +2.7K | 20.5K |
| 2026-07-14 | -7.5K | +2.8K | 19.4K |
| 2026-07-07 | -6.7K | +2.4K | 18.8K |
| 2026-06-30 | -5.3K | +2.0K | 18.3K |
| 2026-06-23 | -6.1K | +2.6K | 20.6K |
| 2026-06-16 | -6.6K | +2.5K | 21.1K |
| 2026-06-09 | -6.0K | +2.9K | 19.8K |
Positions as of each Tuesday, published by the CFTC on Friday. Units are contracts (CME Bitcoin: 5 BTC each; CME Ether: 50 ETH each).
Download the dataset
Weekly positioning for CME Bitcoin, Micro Bitcoin, Ether and Micro Ether futures: open interest plus long and short contracts for every trader category, back to 2018. Official CFTC data. CC0 licensed, free for any use, no key required.
Methodology and sources
The data is the CFTC's official Commitments of Traders report (Traders in Financial Futures), published every Friday with positions as of the preceding Tuesday. It is regulatory filing data, not an estimate: firms above the reporting threshold must report.
We label the CFTC's leveraged money category as hedge funds and asset manager/institutional as institutions, the standard reading. Net position = long contracts minus short contracts; above zero means the group is positioned for upside, below zero for downside.
One honest caveat: this covers CME futures only. Funds may hold offsetting exposure elsewhere (spot, ETFs, offshore perps), so read it as positioning in the regulated US venue rather than total exposure.
What is the COT report?
The Commitments of Traders report is a weekly regulatory publication by the CFTC, the US futures regulator, showing how different trader groups are positioned in every major futures market, including CME Bitcoin and Ethereum futures. It is filing-based data, published every Friday for the preceding Tuesday.
Why do hedge funds show up net short Bitcoin so often?
A large part of hedge fund shorts is the basis trade: funds buy spot Bitcoin or ETFs and short CME futures to harvest the price gap, which is market neutral, not a bearish bet. That is why the hedge fund line alone is not a price prediction; the change from week to week usually carries more signal than the level.
How should I use this chart?
Watch for extremes and turns: when a group reaches its most stretched positioning in months and then starts unwinding, that shift often accompanies medium-term direction changes. Pair it with our ETF flow tracker for the full institutional picture.