BTC CME Hedge Fund Longs vs Shorts (weekly): 12.2K
The two sides of the hedge-fund book at the Chicago exchange: contracts held long, contracts held short, and the gap between them. That gap is mostly the basis trade, not a bet that bitcoin falls. One point per week.
Hedge funds and managed-futures traders — 'leveraged money' in the CFTC's wording — are the largest speculative group in CME bitcoin futures. This chart shows how many contracts they hold on each side separately, instead of **only** the net, with the net line drawn for reference.
One contract is 5 bitcoin.
The short line usually sits well **above** the long line. In the report for 21 July 2026 hedge funds held 11,991 short contracts against 4,042 long — a net short of 7,949, roughly 39,700 bitcoin. Almost all of that short is hedged: the fund owns spot bitcoin or a spot ETF and sells a future against it to bank the price difference, so it earns whichever way the price goes. What matters is the SIZE of the gap and how fast it moves.
A gap widening week after week means the futures price is running ahead of spot and there is easy carry to harvest — a hot, crowded market. A gap collapsing over a few weeks means that trade is being unwound, which forces spot selling and has lined up with local tops. A long line that climbs on its own, without the short line following, is the rarer pattern: leveraged money genuinely betting on the upside.
Taken straight from the CFTC report for the CME bitcoin contract, week by week: 'leveraged money' long contracts, 'leveraged money' short contracts, and long minus short. No smoothing and no filling in between reports.
WEEKLY and late — Tuesday's positions published on Friday, so the last point is at least three days behind and usually more. Not a daily chart. The CFTC also publishes a separate 'spreading' column for funds holding long and short in different months at once; those contracts are excluded here, so long and short do not add up to the group's entire book.
The 5-bitcoin CME contract **only** — Micro Bitcoin futures are a different report. History starts 10 April 2018.
CFTC Public Reporting Environment, 'Traders in Financial Futures — Futures Only' (Socrata dataset gpe5-46if), contract BITCOIN — CHICAGO MERCANTILE EXCHANGE, market code 133741. Free public data, no key; re-read daily by our own worker.
CFTC Commitments of Traders · free public data · 1 point per WEEK (Tuesday positions, published Friday) · full history since 2018-04-10