BTC — the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust — has reversed course this week, gaining 5.8% to $29.04 after sliding nearly 17% over the prior month.
The most notable shift from last week's note is the partial unwind in short positioning. Short interest peaked near 1.1 million shares on June 10 — the highest in the 30-day window — then fell sharply through the rest of the week, landing at roughly 560,000 shares by June 16. That is a 17.7% single-day drop on the final reading and a meaningful pullback from the spike documented in the prior note. At just 0.51% of the free float, shorts remain structurally low-conviction. The borrow market has loosened dramatically in parallel: availability has ballooned back to roughly 6,300%, meaning the lending pool now holds around 13.8 million shares against the current short position — among the loosest conditions seen all month. Cost to borrow is running at 0.77%, off about 14% on the week and barely above its mid-month lows. There is no borrow pressure here.
Options positioning reflects the same broadly relaxed tone. The put/call ratio came in at 0.32, almost exactly in line with its 20-day average of 0.33. The z-score is fractionally negative, which places current positioning right at the historical midpoint — neither defensive nor aggressively bullish. The 52-week range runs from 0.22 to 0.46, so the current reading sits in the lower third, leaning modestly toward calls. Nothing in the options market signals a change in conviction in either direction.
The ORTEX short score has eased to 26.8, pulling back from a weekly high of 35.2 on June 10 — the same session that saw peak borrowing. The score's retreat mirrors the short-interest unwind almost perfectly, confirming that the brief spike in short activity was short-lived rather than the start of a structural build. Combined, the score sits at 26.7, in the lower quartile of the universe, consistent with an instrument where short pressure is modest and declining.
The story heading into next week is whether the price recovery holds or draws fresh short interest back in — the June 10 episode showed how quickly borrowing can spike when the trust sells off sharply, and with availability this loose, the friction to building a new position remains essentially zero.
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