Sovereign funds lay flat, and Wall Street giants bucked the trend and increased their positions in a big way

According to WooFunai, the newly disclosed 13F document revealed a deep split in Bitcoin ETF holdings: Abu Dhabi's two sovereign funds, Mubadala and the Abu Dhabi Investment Committee, chose to stay on hold in the second quarter, while Wall Street giants bucked the trend and increased their positions in a big way.

In terms of sovereign funds, Mubadala held 14.72 million IBIT shares, and the Abu Dhabi Investment Commission held 8.22 million shares. The two companies remained unchanged in the second quarter. Affected by the fall in the price of Bitcoin, the market value of Mubadala's holdings fell from US$566 million to US$490 million, and the Abu Dhabi Investment Commission's holdings fell from US$316 million to US$274 million. Currently, this silent strategy has become a good risk avoidance strategy. In contrast, Wall Street institutions showed a strong offensive stance. JPMorgan Chase (JPM.US) increased its spot Bitcoin ETF holdings from 8.46 million shares to 10.62 million shares, an increase of 25.5%; Morgan Stanley (MS.US) ETF holdings increased by 3.04 million shares to about 16.5 million shares, an increase of 23%. The share of UBS (UBS.US) common ETF increased 13%, and what is more noteworthy is its option-side operation: IBIT bullish options soared from 80,000 shares to 1.95 million shares, and put options fell from 303,000 shares to 143,000 shares.

According to data compiled by WooFunai, although 13F only discloses long positions and held options, and does not include short and sold options, UBS's drastic adjustments on the options side still suggest a strong bullish trend. Even if it is impossible to fully determine its net direction, this asymmetrical position change is already very signalling.

Judging from the overall capital flow of the market, the Bitcoin ETF market had a net outflow of about US$4.9 billion in the second quarter, of which US$2 billion was concentrated in the last few trading days of June. After entering August, there was a net inflow for five consecutive days in the first week of August, with a cumulative total of about 850 million US dollars, but the trend reversed last week. The total net outflow of Bitcoin spot ETFs was 390 million US dollars, and inflows were recorded on only one day of the five trading days. At the price level, Bitcoin hovered around $63,000, down nearly 30% from the beginning of the year, and just below its all-time high in October last year, causing Bitcoin ETF assets under management to drop from over US$116.7 billion to about US$95.5 billion. The derivatives market also shows a complicated pattern. Bitcoin's open contracts are worth US$47.88 billion, and CME leveraged funds hold 5,000 Bitcoin futures contract long positions and 12,000 short positions. The size of the bears is more than double that of the long ones.

However, due to the large number of ETF holders' arbitrage positions on CME, it is difficult to accurately determine trends by simply relying on the amount of leverage, and the bulls are currently in a relatively awkward passive situation.

Policy-level variables could be the key to breaking the impasse. This week, Trump will meet with the SEC Chairman and CFTC Chairman at the White House with executives from companies such as Coinbase (COIN.US), a16z, Kalshi, and Paradigm. The core topics revolve around a clear bill. As the critical voting period is approaching in a month, whether the exemption policies and industry rules previously rumored to be issued by the SEC and CFTC can be implemented will largely depend on the progress of this meeting. Last week's CPI data failed to trigger sharp market fluctuations, indicating that the marginal influence of macro data on current market sentiment is weakening. Smart capital will either pretend to die or take advantage of the opportunity. The market surface is calm and quiet, but the dark current is actually surging. The financial performance of ETFs this week and the final results of the White House meeting will be the key variables that will determine the next phase of the market.