Data Shows Institutional Investors Diversifying Out of Bitcoin and Into Ethereum & Other Altcoins

Crypto asset investment products registered a net outflow of $50 million last week, the first since October last year and the largest since May 2019. However, “historical data implies that outflows of this nature have not marked pivotal points in sentiment change for digital assets,” notes CoinShares in its weekly report. Interestingly, Bitcoin (BTC) investment products were the only ones to record outflows at $98 million, 0.2% of total assets under management (AUM). While small, this represents the largest outflow recorded, with the second-largest at $19 million in May 2019. Total Bitcoin inflows amounted to $4.3 billion for the year, while last year, investors pumped $15.6 billion into Bitcoin funds and products, and Ethereum inflows reached almost $2.5 billion. Unlike Bitcoin, all the other digital asset investment products continued to see inflows totaling $48 million last week. The data implies that “investors have been diversifying out of Bitcoin and into altcoin investment products,” it states. The investment vehicles for the second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, continued to see continued inflows, gathering $27 million last week. The products also had Ethereum trading volumes at the largest ever, totaling $4.1 billion for the week. This has been the first time that there have been more investment product trading volumes in Ethereum relative to Bitcoin, which only recorded $3.1bn last week. "Bitcoin's perceived environmental costs are becoming a bigger and bigger part of the narrative, boosting the relative appeal of ethereum and its upcoming transition to the less energy-intense proof-of-stake security model," said Matt Weller, global head of market research at Forex.com. Besides Ethereum (ETH), Cardano (ADA) and Polkadot (DOT) remain the most popular and recorded inflows of $6 million and $3.3 million respectively. Grayscale remains the largest digital asset manager with $47.268 million in assets, which saw zero inflows not only last week but also so far in May. CoinShares, the second-biggest and largest European digital asset manager, oversaw about $6 billion as of last week, which along with 3iQ, ETC issuance, and Purpose Investments, all recorded more outflows last week than inflows, with 21 Shares being the only exception to that.