Institutional Inflows Trickle Back into Bitcoin But Out of Ethereum

Institutional inflows for Bitcoin-based funds have increased over the past week, but the same cannot be said for those based on the world’s second-largest digital asset, Ethereum.

According to fund manager CoinShares, there has been $109 million in inflows for crypto-related products over the past week. The Feb. 22 report revealed that 81% of this total, or $88.5 million, has gone into Bitcoin (BTC) based funds.

“Following the run of outflows in January, the latest data marks the 5th week of inflows.”

Warming to Bitcoin

Institutional investors appear to be warming to Bitcoin again, regardless of the fact that the asset has shed 15% of its value over the past week.

Although the inflows are the highest they have been since December, they remain tepid compared to last year when markets were bullish. The Purpose and ProShares funds saw the most inflows while CoinShares’ own fund saw an outflow of $21.6 million.

Multi-asset funds also saw an inflow of $9.4 million for the week, but there was no love for Ethereum (ETH). Ethereum-based funds saw an outflow of $15.2 million according to the report. This reverses the inflow trend of the previous week which saw Ethereum funds dominate. ETH prices had fared worse than BTC over the past seven days dumping 18%.

Total inflows have been gradually increasing week by week over the past 5 weeks but they are a far cry from the massive amount of money that poured into crypto funds in the latter half of 2021.

The world’s largest crypto asset fund manager, Grayscale, has reported a slight decline in its flagship Bitcoin Trust which is now worth $25.7 billion. There was no change in weekly fund flows according to the CoinShares report.

Here’s a snapshot of Grayscale investment products this week.
For the latest details, check our product tracker: https://t.co/wQY12uYMcf$AAVE $ADA $AMP $BTC $BAT $BCH $COMP $CRV $ETH $ETC $FIL $LINK $LPT $LTC $MANA $MKR $SNX $SOL $SUSHI $UNI $XLM $YFI $ZEC $ZEN pic.twitter.com/PJZH5TCMi3

— Grayscale (@Grayscale) February 21, 2022

Crypto Markets Turn Bearish

Digital asset markets are actually up 2% on the day at the time of writing, but they have been battered over the past couple of weeks. Bitcoin and Ethereum have made a little over 3% each on the day, but they have been in steady decline over the past fortnight.

Since the beginning of the month, total market capitalization has declined by 14.5%, or around $300 billion. The trend is clearly down and industry analysts and experts are beginning to brace for a prolonged bear market.