Last week ended with “growing investor confidence” in the digital asset market, with Bitcoin (BTC) in particular once again becoming a preferred investment at the expense of Ethereum (ETH), according to data from cryptoasset management firm CoinShares.
According to the company’s weekly Digital Asset Fund Flows report, which tracks flows in and out of regulated digital asset funds, Bitcoin saw inflows of USD 69m last week. Weekly inflows marked the third consecutive week of positive flows for the asset after it suffered “the longest outflows since it existed” earlier this year, the report said.
Meanwhile, ETH funds recorded less than a third of the inflows Bitcoin had, with $20m coming in, according to the report last week.
The stronger inflows into Bitcoin led to the number one digital asset taking market share from Ethereum, CoinShares said, while noting that Ethereum’s market share for covered investment products dropped from a peak of 28% to 25% last week.
Also in one week, flows in BTC increased by 38%, while flows in ETH decreased by 45%.
The fund flows pursued by CoinShares are often seen as proxy for institutional interests in various digital assets, as many financial institutions and traditional investors prefer to hold regulated funds instead of the digital asset itself.
In terms of other digital assets, Binance Coin (BNB) and Polkadot (DOT) were the only ones to record outflows, losing USD 0.8M each.
Overall, Digital asset Investment products recorded inflows of USD 90 million last week, making it the seventh consecutive week of fund inflows for the sector. However, CoinShares also noted that volume still remains relatively low at USD 2.4Bn for the week.
The latest data on fund flows represent a change from the results of a report by the investment banking giant JP Morgan from two weeks ago. In the report, the bank said that the prices of regulated Bitcoin and Ethereum futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) indicate an increasing institutional interest in Ethereum at the expense of Bitcoin.
Meanwhile, the Bitcoin price continued to rise on Monday and Tuesday as it flirted with the psychologically important USD 50,000 mark for the first time since early September. At 08:59 UTC, Bitcoin rose nearly 5% over the past 24 hours, trading at a price of USD 49,882. Ethereum rose 2% to USD 3,415 over the same period.