Ethereum Price Wavers As Institutional Investors Pull $60.7 Million In One Week

Crypto investment products tracking Ethereum and others registered another week of outflows last week, albeit at a lesser amount, to extend the run of outflows to three consecutive weeks. Digital investment products witnessed $30 million worth of outflows last week.

However, this outflow deviated from the trend we normally observe, with Bitcoin taking a step back and most of the movement coming from Ethereum-based investment products. Particularly, the latest CoinShares report shows that institutional investors pulled a whopping $60.7 million from Ethereum-based investment products in just one week, the largest so far this year. 

Ethereum Leads The Outflows

CoinShares’ latest Digital Asset Fund Flows Weekly report suggests that institutional investor sentiment regarding Bitcoin is changing into a bullish one. Notably, Bitcoin-based products registered $10 million worth of inflows last week. While this is small compared to the normal level of inflows usually witnessed by the crypto asset, the fact that its inflow suggests a lingering bullish sentiment regarding Bitcoin despite a poor price performance last week.

On the other hand, the same can’t be said for Ethereum. Institutional investor sentiment regarding the king of altcoins seems to be waning as the launch of Spot Ethereum ETFs continues to drag on. Ethereum-based saw outflows of $61 million last week, the largest since August 2022.

Consequently, this means the asset has lost $119 million worth of institutional investment in the past two weeks, making it the worst-performing asset year-to-date in terms of net flows. This is backed up by data from CoinShares, which shows Ethereum’s year-to-date outflows now at $25 million. Furthermore, the data indicates Ethereum is the only digital asset with a net outflow since the beginning of the year.

Every other digital asset product registered inflows last week. Multi-asset products led the charge with $17.9 million worth of inflows. Bitcoin came in second with $10 million worth of inflows. Solana, Litecoin, XRP, and Chainlink also witnessed minor inflows of $1.6 million, $1.4 million, $0.3 million, and $0.6 million outflows, respectively. This influx of money suggests institutional investors are still willing to put money into altcoins despite the poor price performance of most of them last week. 

Reflecting the bullish sentiment, short-bitcoin products witnessed $4.2 million worth of outflows. Trading volumes also rose by 43% week-on-week to $6.2 billion but remained well below the $14.2 billion weekly average for the year. 

According to CoinShares, most providers saw minor inflows, although most of this was canceled out by $153 million in outflows from Grayscale. In terms of region, the US-dominated again with $43 million. Brazil and Australia followed with $7.6 million and $2.9 million inflows respectively. On the other hand, Germany, Hong Kong, Canada, Switzerland, and Sweden all witnessed outflows of $28.5 million, $23.2 million, $14.4 million, $13.3 million, and $4.3 million, respectively.

Featured image created with Dall.E, chart from Tradingview.com