Bitcoin led crypto outflows tally with $133 million drop in AUM
Bitcoin posted a sharp weekly outflow as institutional investors continued to pull money out of cryptocurrency products and funds amid an ongoing decline in prices, data from digital currency manager CoinShares shows.
CoinShares’ weekly survey of cryptocurrency investments shows that net outflows hit $120 million last week, bringing total outflows in this 4-week run to $339 million. Regionally, the outflows were fairly evenly split between The Americas comprising 41% and Europe 59%.
Bitcoin led the tally with $133 million outflows during the week, the largest weekly outflow since June 2021. With overall sentiment on cryptocurrencies turning cautious as the digital asset’s searing rally hit a wall, CoinShares writes that it is difficult to ascertain the precise reason for this other than the hawkish rhetoric from the Federal Reserve and the recent price decline.
The decline in April, noted the asset manager, marked a reversal of the recent trend that included two straight months of inflows.
“This doesn’t reflect the same bearishness seen at the beginning of this year, although it is close to the $467m outflows witnessed,” said CoinShares’ investment strategist James Butterfill.
That said, CoinShares notes that FTX Token, the utility token for the FTX crypto exchange, bucked the negative trend with inflows totaling $38 million, the largest of all crypto assets the company tracks.
Minor outflows were seen in most altcoins
Moreover, other assets including Ethereum saw outflows amounting to $25 million, entering its fifth week of outflows that totaled $194 million year-to-date. From a relative perspective, Ethereum remains the focus of negative sentiment with outflows representing 1.5 percent of AuM.
The AUM into the second largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalisation stood at $12.4 billion. This contrasts to Bitcoin’s AUM which saw net inflows of $120 million during the same period. Total assets under management were $50.4 billion as of last week, down from $64.2 billion in mid-April.
Breaking down the latest statistics, Coinshares said minor outflows were seen in most altcoins’ investment products. Terra and Fantom were the worst performers with outflows of $0.39 million and $0.25 million respectively.
Blockchain equities finally succumbed to the negative sentiment with outflows totalling $27 million last week, only the third week to see outflows this year.
CoinShares is Europe’s largest digital asset investment firm. The company’s ETPs aim to be the lowest cost product providing regulated access to crypto tokens, whilst benefiting from the institutional grade security and 100% physically backed features that match other ETC securities.
CoinShares, which has nearly $3.5 billion in assets under management (AUM), says its lineup of physical ETPs have been produced in response to strong demand from institutional investors to gain crypto exposure through regulated means.
