Analysis: Claim of the "Largest ETH Short Position in History" Is Greatly Exaggerated

BlockBeats News, July 5th, Coinbase Institutional's Research Director David Duong published an analysis stating, "The so-called 'largest ETH short position in history' is actually greatly exaggerated... So what is the real situation? (As shown in the attached image: CFTC leveraged funds' ETH short position chart based on cash margin)".

ETH Spot ETF saw a strong growth in June, with net inflows reaching $1.16 billion, marking an unprecedented surge in the history of such products, mainly driven by an increasing number of institutions participating in CME basis trades.

In CME's ETH futures, leveraged funds' short positions rose from $466 million in early May to $1.6 billion on June 24th, an increase of $1.14 billion—interestingly, this is very close to the net inflow scale of the spot ETF. Why is this so?

This is because the annualized basis yield of ETH futures relative to spot increased from an average of 6% in February to 8%–9% in May and June, attracting more institutional investors to engage in arbitrage trading by buying spot and selling futures."