According to Wall Street bank JPMorgan (JPM), the recent market sell-off was likely led by retail and other cryptocurrency-focused investors rather than traditional institutions.
While bitcoin and ether both fell after October 10, BTC spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) BTC futures experienced little forced selling, the report noted.
Bitcoin ETF outflows totaled just $220 million, or 0.14% of assets under management, compared to ether ETFs’ $370 million, or 1.23%, analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote in Thursday’s report.
A similar pattern appeared in CME futures, with minimal bitcoin liquidations and higher ether sales, which the bank’s analysts attributed to momentum-driven traders reducing risk.
The biggest losses came in perpetual futures, where open interest in bitcoin and ether contracts fell by around 40%, outpacing the drop in spot prices, the report added.
JPMorgan said the scale of the sell-off points to crypto-native traders as the main driver of the downturn, with ether being hit harder than bitcoin.
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