(Kitco News) – Digital asset investment products recorded $126 million in outflows last week as investors became more hesitant as upward price momentum in crypto markets stalled, according to the latest report from CoinShares.
“Volumes did pick up a little from US$17bn to US$21bn week-on-week, but ETP/ETF activity dropped relative to the overall market, from 40% of total volumes on trusted exchanges over the last month to 31% last week, demonstrating this caution amongst investors,” said James Butterfill, head of research at Coinshares.
Regionally, the United States saw the largest outflows of $145 million, with Canada and Switzerland seeing $6 million and $5.7 million in outflows respectively. “Investors in Germany saw recent price weakness as an opportunity, seeing US$29m inflows last week,” he noted.
In terms of assets, Bitcoin saw the lion’s share of outflows with $110 million but BTC still retained its positive month-to-date inflows of $555 million. “Short-bitcoin broke its 3-week spell of outflows, with minor inflows of US$1.7m, presumably taking advantage of recent price weakness,” Butterfill said.
On a relative basis, Ethereum was hit the hardest, with $29 million in outflows from ETH funds last week, its fifth consecutive week of outflows.
“Aside from Solana seeing US$3.6m outflows last week, altcoins had another good week, with more esoteric names seeing inflows, such as Decentraland, Basic Attention Token and LIDO, which saw US$4.9m, US$2.9m and US$1.8m inflows respectively,” Butterfill noted.
With the Bitcoin halving now only 4-5 days away, sentiment in the crypto ecosystem pulled back to ‘Greed’ territory, down from ‘Extreme Greed’ last week, according to data provided by Alternative.
While most analysts agree that the price action post-halving will be volatile, the consensus is that the trend will be higher as history shows the crypto market enjoys a healthy bull market that can last for six to eighteen months after the halving takes place.