The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission plans to publish Commitments of Traders data twice a week, a change that would give Bitcoin market participants a faster public view of CME Bitcoin futures positioning around Federal Reserve policy decisions. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig announced the plan on October 27, saying the change was prompted by feedback from the agricultural community.
Under the current system, Tuesday positions are published Friday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern time, a three-day lag. Under the planned schedule, Monday snapshots would be released Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. ET, and Wednesday snapshots would be released Friday at 3:30 p.m. ET. The CFTC is targeting the end of 2026, but has not named a first publication date.
The Wednesday cutoff is significant for Bitcoin because the Federal Reserve usually announces interest-rate decisions on Wednesdays at 2:00 p.m. Eastern. A Wednesday snapshot would capture positioning at the end of decision day and publish it that Friday, rather than forcing traders to wait more than a week under the current schedule. A Monday cutoff could also reveal short positions added before a Fed decision and closed before Thursday.
The latest financial-futures report, covering October 20 positions, shows the two largest Bitcoin categories on opposite sides. Asset managers were roughly 15,000 BTC net long, while leveraged funds were about 24,700 BTC net short. Each standard CME Bitcoin contract represents five BTC. At about $80,000 per bitcoin, that is around $1.2 billion net long for asset managers and about $2 billion net short for leveraged funds.
The CFTC notes that a large leveraged-fund short is not necessarily bearish. Many funds use the basis trade: buying spot bitcoin or spot ETF shares and selling futures priced above spot to collect the convergence gap. That means ETF inflows and leveraged-fund shorts can rise together, as recently seen with demand concentrated in BlackRock’s fund. Micro Bitcoin futures, at 0.1 BTC per contract, are reported separately.
The CFTC also warns that the two reporting intervals are not directly comparable: Monday to Wednesday spans two days, while Wednesday to Monday spans five. Futures-only and futures-and-options-combined reports can also report different totals.
Bitcoin traded near $80,000 on October 27 as market participants awaited the Federal Reserve’s two-day FOMC meeting on October 27 and 28. The meeting calendar is not a final rate decision, and the key uncertainty remains how the Fed communicates its assessment of inflation, growth and future borrowing costs.
