Investors are shorting Bitcoin and Ethereum in record numbers

According to a CoinShares report on November 21, most institutional investors are betting that the price of BTC and other cryptocurrencies will drop significantly.

Based on the report, institutional investor sentiment was "very negative" last week, with short-term receipts accounting for 75% of total receipts, a record high.

Short-selling products allow investors to short a cryptocurrency (bet on a decrease in the price of an asset). In the case of what happened last week, investors rallied to bet their money that the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum would continue to decline.

The report states that assets under the management of crypto investment products also hit a two-year low of $22 billion, suggesting that overall sentiment was deeply negative for the asset class.

And last week, an unprecedented number of investors invested their money in a $14 million Ethereum short investment product.

CoinShares added that interest in short products is "probably a direct result of the ongoing impact of the FTX crash."

According to a report from CoinShares, investors made $6 million last week, mostly in altcoins such as Solana, XRP, Binance, and Polygon.

The crypto market, already in dire straits, was hit by the news this month that FTX, once one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, has lost billions of dollars of investor cash due to publicity.

It is believed that FTX allegedly used clients' money to make risky investment bets through Alameda Research, a trading company founded by the exchange's CEO Sam Benkman-Freed.

After the bankruptcy, the company was forced to admit that it had no reserves for customer assets, which led to a withdrawal freeze and subsequent bankruptcy.

Reporting documents released by FTX on Saturday showed the exchange owed $3.1 billion to its top 50 creditors.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is down 3.5% in 24 hours and is trading at $15,998. The price of Ethereum is $1105, which is 6% less than in the past day.