Hedge funds including Millennium Management, Capula Management and Tudor Investment increased their exposure to U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the third quarter, securities filings showed, as a popular election-driven arbitrage trade ramped up.
President-elect Donald Trump embraced digital assets during his campaign, promising friendly regulation and to accumulate a national stockpile of bitcoin. The cryptocurrency surpassed the $90,000 level to reach an all-time high earlier this week, although it has pared gains.
During the election price volatility, some hedge funds have been taking advantage of a price difference between spot bitcoin and its derivatives in the futures market in a leveraged trade, according to analysts. Spot ETFs were approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year.
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In the so-called bitcoin basis trade, investors buy spot bitcoin - or its ETFs - and short the cryptocurrency futures, which have been trading at substantially higher prices this year. This gap widened after the election result and on Nov. 11 reached 17% in an annual basis, CF Bitcoin data showed, but pared gains to 12% on Friday.
"Hedge funds are harvesting that spread. It creates a very tactical, opportunistic trade," said Gabe Selby, head of research at Kraken's CF Benchmarks. "It has an uncorrelated return."
Positions unveiled in 13-F filings this week only show long equity bets placed by hedge funds and not wagers on the fall of share prices or derivatives. Reuters could not determine whether specific hedge funds were putting on such an arbitrage bet, only if they have taken long positions.
Among those that increased their exposure to the cryptocurrency was Israel Englander's Millennium, which more than doubled its number of shares in iShares Bitcoin Trust to 23.5 million shares, worth $849 million, from the previous quarter. It also increased its positions in ARK 21Shares Bitcoin and Bitwise Bitcoin funds.
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Overall, the New York-based hedge fund ended September with $1.7 billion in crypto ETFs, including spot bitcoin and ethereum funds. The ETFs account for a small portion of the firm's $70 billion in assets under management.
Capula, a London-based macro hedge fund, also added more shares in iShares Bitcoin Trust and Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund, according to an SEC filing on Thursday. Those positions totaled roughly $600 million.
Paul Tudor Jones' hedge fund Tudor turbocharged its exposure to iShares Bitcoin Trust fund, increasing its number of shares by five times, to 4.4 million.
Schonfeld Strategic Partners is also a hedge fund that added more shares in bitcoin funds.
Millennium and Tudor declined to comment on their positions. The other hedge funds did not immediately comment on the matter.
If hedge funds kept their positions through the fourth quarter, they could be poised to post big gains. Since the end of September, spot bitcoin ETFs are up roughly 40%, mainly driven by the result of the U.S. presidential election.
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Given bitcoin's more volatile price, many hedge funds prefer more neutral trades that do not take a directional bet on its rise or fall.
David Duong, Coinbase's institutional head of research, said the bitcoin basis trade has climbed for the last few weeks.
"Leading into the election, we had multiple clients actually requesting increases in their credit lines (to trade)," he added.
