Ethereum’s institutional outflows hit record US$50M, CoinShares data says

Ethereum is bearing the brunt of negative sentiment on crypto, with net outflows from institutional products related to the token hitting a record of US$50 million last week, according to a report by CoinShares, Europe’s largest digital asset investment firm.

Fast facts:

• Outflows from all institutional digital asset investment products totaled US$44 million, marking the fourth consecutive week of outflows, CoinShares said. “This outflow, on a relative basis, remains small in comparison to the negative sentiment in early 2018 where outflows as a percentage of [assets under management] totaled 4.9%,” CoinShares wrote in its weekly report.

• Bitcoin saw its seventh consecutive week of outflows, with US$1.3 million exiting, although the direction was mixed, with some providers seeing outflows and others experiencing inflows, CoinShares reported.

• Multi-asset investment products continue to hold up, with inflows of US$6 million — albeit down slightly from US$10 million the week before — “suggesting that investors continue to favor digital assets but are keen to diversify”, CoinShares said. XRP and Cardano also saw inflows of US$1.4 million and US$0.1 million, respectively.

• Justin Chuh, a senior trader at Wave Financial, said in an emailed weekly market update: “As Q2 2021 comes to a close, BTC is down ~41% through the quarter, but still up ~19% on the year. ETH is still barely up ~3% QTD but posts an impressive ~166% YTD. Crypto markets may be much more volatile than traditional markets, where the S&P is up 7.75% on the quarter, and 14% since the start of the year, but much more fun.”