JPMorgan analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said in a note this week that Bitcoin (BTC) could draw more price support than gold if hedging demand in the ETF market eases, with short interest in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) sitting near its highest level of the year.
IBIT’s put-to-call open interest ratio runs above that of the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD), which the analysts read as heavier hedging around Bitcoin, while short interest in GLD sits below its historical average.
Bitcoin Vs. Gold
Bitcoin still faces a more skeptical positioning backdrop than gold despite recent inflows and a build-up of futures positioning, the note said. Moreover, figures reported by FINRA and compiled by MarketBeat put IBIT’s short base at 45.9 million shares as of the August 31 settlement date, the highest reading of 2026 and up 23.8% from 37.1 million two weeks earlier.
The position equals 3.53% of the float and would take 0.6 days of the fund’s average trading volume, about 53 million shares, to cover. At the end of March, the short base stood near 13 million shares, the year’s low.
Bitcoin and gold funds both drew inflows after the Federal Reserve’s late-July meeting, when the debasement trade returned, according to the note. That’s part of the reason behind the rally that carried Bitcoin toward $80,000 and gold near $4,600 an ounce as investors rotated into scarce assets on US fiscal concerns.
However, momentum faded over the past week as inflation-adjusted bond yields rose and the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act in a procedural vote that fell short of the 60 votes needed, the analysts wrote. Gold ETFs have recovered all of their outflows from earlier this year, the note said, while Bitcoin funds have recaptured about half.
Panigirtzoglou’s team has run the Bitcoin-gold comparison before. In February, with crypto assets under pressure, the analysts put a volatility-adjusted comparison to gold at $266,000 per Bitcoin, in their words, “an unrealistic target for this year” but one that “shows the upside potential over the long term once negative sentiment is reversed.”
Bitcoin traded near $76,500 on Thursday, little changed over the past 24 hours, per CoinGecko data.
ETF Flows Swinging Hard
Moreover, US spot Bitcoin ETFs have swung hard this month, posting $236 million in outflows on September 1 before taking in $731 million on September 3, their strongest day since January, with IBIT alone accounting for roughly $454 million.
Net assets across the funds stood at $103.3 billion in early September, about 6% of Bitcoin’s market capitalization, per SoSoValue data.
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