Investors Pull Coins From Bitcoin Funds

Bitcoin funds are bleeding coins even as U.S. bank failures fuel expectations of an early Federal Reserve pivot in favor of liquidity easing. Usually, if the Fed doesn’t raise rates aggressively like it has been doing, risky assets like bitcoin benefit, but the opposite is occurring with the bitcoin funds. Data tracked by ByteTree Asset Management shows the number of coins held by close-ended funds, spot and futures-focused exchange-traded funds in Europe, the U.S. and Canada has declined by 16,560 BTC ($409 million) this month, reaching a 17-month low of 826,113 BTC. ETFs and other investment vehicles that allow taking exposure to bitcoin without having to own the cryptocurrency are widely considered a proxy for institutional activity.