Investment products offering crypto exposure have surged in popularity since last month, attracting net inflows of $137 million over the last week alone.
Meanwhile, trading volumes for such products have soared beyond their yearly average, totalling $2.3 billion last week.
Per Coinshares’ weekly report, inflows into digital asset investment products totalled $742 million over the past 4 weeks.
That’s the greatest investment rush into the sector since Q4 2021 – when Bitcoin (BTC) tapped its all-time high of $69,000. Indeed, virtually all investment interest appears to be in Bitcoin specifically, which absorbed $140 million of inflows last week.
“Bitcoin saw inflows totalling US$140m, comprising 99% of all inflows,” read the report. “Short bitcoin investment products saw a 12th week of outflows of US$3.2m.”
Bitcoin has traded above $30,000 since last month after BlackRock – the world’s largest asset manager – entered the race to list a Bitcoin spot ETF in the United States. The move not only signalled legitimacy for an oft-criticized asset class but gave investors hope that such a product might actually get approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Many investors are bullish that an ETF for Bitcoin could attract a wave of capital into the asset from investors unable or unwilling to purchase actual coins on an exchange. According to CoinShares, most capital going to crypto investment funds last week went to ProShares ETFs – funds backed by crypto futures contracts, rather than real coins or tokens.
“Regionally, the inflows were focussed almost solely on North America, with inflows of US$109m and US$28m in the US and Canada respectively,” the report stated. “While minor outflows were seen in Europe with the exception of minor inflows in Switzerland.”
Canada was the first country in the world to approve a Bitcoin spot ETF. Lawmakers in the region recently published a set of digital asset policy recommendations calling for the protection of the users’ right to hold their own crypto.
While Ether (ETH) rose alongside Bitcoin since last month, institutional interest in the asset isn’t quite visible. In fact, the crypto suffered minor outflows of $2 million last week from digital asset funds, making it the asset with the most outflows year-to-date.
“Altcoins, Solana, Polygon and Litecoin saw minor inflows of between US$0.5m, US$0.5m and US$.3m respectively,” the report added
Solana (SOL) and Polygon (MATIC) suffered last month after the SEC alleged that both assets were unregistered securities in its lawsuit against Coinbase. However, a positive outcome for XRP in Ripple’s lawsuit with the SEC last week has such coins making a comeback.