The arrival of institutional investors that was predicted to come with the launch of the first U.S. spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds has begun as data provided by CoinShares shows that the week ending Feb. 16 saw record inflows into digital asset investment products.
A total of $2.45 billion flowed into globally listed crypto funds, bringing year-to-date inflows to $5.2 billion. “These inflows, coupled with recent positive price moves, have elevated the total assets under management (AuM) to US$67 billion, marking the highest level since December 2021,” said James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares.
U.S.-listed funds accounted for 99% of the inflows with a total of $2.4 billion, which “represents a significant acceleration of net inflows, distributed widely among various providers, indicating an increasing interest in spot-based ETFs,” Butterfill said.
At the same time, outflows from other regions that had products listed before the launch of the U.S. ETFs have slowed significantly, with Sweden seeing outflows of $26 million, while Germany and Switzerland experienced modest inflows of $13 million and $1 million, respectively.
“Bitcoin saw over 99% of the inflows although some investors took the opportunity to add to short-bitcoin positions, which saw US$5.8m inflows,” Butterfill said.
Ethereum (ETH) products recorded $21 million in inflows, while the recent network outage for Solana (SOL) sparked a decline in sentiment that resulted in $1.6 million worth of outflows.
Avalanche (AVAX), Chainlink (LINK), and Polygon (MATIC) continued their trend of consistent inflows in 2024, securing gains of $1 million, $0.9 million, and $0.9 million respectively.
“Investors in blockchain equity ETFs decided to take profits last week, seeing outflows totalling US$167m,” Butterfill concluded.
Data provided by Alternative shows that sentiment in the crypto market has pulled back slightly from its multi-year high “Extreme Greed” reading of 79 recorded on Feb. 13 but it remains firmly in “Greed” territory on Tuesday, with Bitcoin continuing to trade near support at $52,000 while Ethereum hit $3,000 for the first time since May 2022.
