What’s up with IBIT?

On FinX there have been quite a bit of posts claiming the iShares Bitcoin Spot ETF has the most inflows amoung the ETFs and from what I have looked at, it does have the lowest fees – but I think I found the reason.

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You can actually short IBIT on Fidelity.

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I'm really confused about this and it makes me wonder how much of the ETF inflow statistics being posted on a daily basis are based in reality and how much of the ETF inflows are just synthetic margin? Also, is this even legal for Fidelity to allow me to short IBIT? I thought the SEC had a pretty strict rule on the Spot Bitcoin ETFs where you could not short them for fear of market manipulation – because up until now the only real reliable game in town to short was BITO. XBTF was ok but too bouncy to get good cover prices.

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So are they totally just fudging those claims of X millions in inflows if around 5.5 million shares of IBIT are marginable?

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Wouldn't this mean that $220 million of those ETF inflows is just bogus and synthetic?