For a brief period on 9 May, Bitcoin (BTC) plunged below $30,000, which is its lowest level in 2022. In the past week, the crypto asset lost nearly 20% of its value. However, institutional investors shrugged off price concerns and poured nearly $45 million into BTC investment products.
While BTC remained the preferred choice of institutional players, altcoins like Ethereum and Polkadot took a major hit. ETH investment products saw outflows worth $12.5 million. Since the start of 2022, approximately $207 million worth of investment has left Ethereum products.
The overall value of global digital assets under management has dropped sharply since November 2021 when BTC and ETH touched record highs.
“Digital asset investment products surprisingly saw inflows totaling US$40m last week in what we believe was investors taking advantage of the substantive price weakness to add to positions. Flows were lopsided with inflows of US$66m in North American investment products while Europe saw outflows totaling US$26m. Interestingly, we have not seen the same spike in investment product trading activity as we typically see historically during extreme price weakness periods, and it is too early to tell if this marks the end of the 4-week run of negative sentiment,” CoinShares noted in its recent report.
Ethereum and Polkadot
In 2021, Ethereum and Polkadot gained massive popularity among institutional investors as both digital currencies attracted large inflows throughout the year. Since the start of the crypto market correction in November 2021, ETH and DOT have witnessed a dropped in institutional interest that resulted in a sharp decline in the overall value of ETH and DOT assets under management.
“Short BTC saw the second-largest weekly inflows on record, totaling US$4m. AUM is now at a record high of US$45m, although this still remains only 0.15% of Long Bitcoin investment products,” the report added.
