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The sellers, including Millennium, Brevan Howard and Goldman Sachs, exited as the cash-and-carry trade’s premium over Treasury bills shrank.
Wed 28 Oct 2026 · 12:20 EDT · 1 min read
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Nine hedge funds and banks cut about 68,000 BTC of spot Bitcoin ETF exposure between September 2025 and June 2026, according to Galaxy Research, Decrypt reported. Galaxy said the selling reflected a fading cash-and-carry trade rather than bets against Bitcoin.
The sellers were Millennium Management, Brevan Howard, Goldman Sachs, Capula Management, Farallon Capital, D.E. Shaw, Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, Symmetry Investments and Tudor Investment. Holdings reported by 13F filers fell 14% to 307,000 BTC, while the roughly 2,200 other filers added about 20,000 BTC.
Basis trade premium shrinks
The trade buys spot ETF shares and shorts CME futures to capture the basis. That basis averaged 4.8% annualized in the 30 days to Oct. 21, just 0.6 percentage points above three-month Treasury bills. “That arithmetic, not the price, is why the multi-strategy desks left,” wrote Alex Thorn, Galaxy’s head of firmwide research.
Morgan Stanley’s wealth management arm, Mubadala and the Abu Dhabi Investment Council were among the buyers. Funds have added 87,000 BTC since the June low, which Galaxy described as directional buying.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Vivian Nguyen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.