In bitcoin, maybe, but I'm not sure if that's even possible with these tokens--they've got thin markets to begin with, and usually you need liquid markets and people who are willing to let you borrow what you want to sell short.  But yours is a very good question, though there's no indication that they weren't selling anything short.  Bitcoin itself fell quite steeply but has been trading sideways for a while now.  You might have made good money shorting it when it was close to $20,000 but timing's the key.  Would you be comfortable shorting it now?  It's a tough call for anyone, including these hedge fund people.

I have to profess ignorance as to who these hedge funders are, but I question whether they're qualified to be managing other people's money in the first place if they've closed up shop so quickly.  You all have seen the "securities" section of bitcointalk, and pretty much anyone can sell "securities" on it, but that doesn't make them anything but scammers usually.  It would seem to me that you'd have to be an exceptionally shitty money manager to get into an asset as notoriously volatile as bitcoin/crypto, and then be driven out of business by a drop to a level that's still over 10x greater than the level two years ago.