Hedge funds have been increasing their short bets against cryptocurrency miners, in expectation of further fallout from the collapse on Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX digital assets empire, according to a report by the Financial Times.

The price of bitcoin has tumbled by nearly two-thirds so far this year, while the cost of operating the energy-intensive computers used by bitcoin miners has risen sharply on the back of global power increases, leading some hedge fund managers to wager that some companies could soon run into problems.

The report cites data from Nasdaq as revealing that short bets against one of the the largest US-listed miners, Marathon Digital, spiked again last month to more than 36 per cent of the loss-making company's outstanding shares, while funds have also reportedly more than doubled their bets against Stronghold Digital Mining — whose shares are already down 96 per cent this year — to nearly 10 per cent of the shares since the start of the year.

Short interest in Greenidge Generation, meanwhile, has risen from less than 1 per cent to 4.7 per cent, while Hut 8 Mining and Riot Blockchain, the largest US-listed operator, have also attracted increased attention from short sellers this year.