Institutional inflows return to Bitcoin but not Ethereum

Institutional inflows for Bitcoin-based funds have increased over the past week, but the same cannot be said for those based on the world's second largest digital asset, Ethereum.

According to fund manager CoinShares, there have been $ 109 million in inflows for cryptocurrency-related products in the past week. The February 22 report revealed that 81% of that total, or $ 88,5 million, went into Bitcoin (BTC) -based funds.

Passion for Bitcoin

- Investors Institutions appear to be heating up again for Bitcoin, regardless of whether the asset has lost 15% of its value in the past week.

While inflows are the highest since December, they remain tepid from last year when markets were bullish. The Purpose and ProShares funds saw the largest inflows, while the CoinShares fund saw an outflow of $ 21,6 million.

Multi-asset funds also saw an inflow of $ 9,4 million for the week, but there was no love for Ethereum (ETH). Ethereum-based funds saw an outflow of $ 15,2 million, according to the report. This reverses the previous week's influx trend that saw Ethereum funds dominate. ETH prices had fared worse than BTC in the past seven days, dropping 18%.

Total inflows have gradually increased from week to week over the past 5 weeks, but they are a far cry from the massive amount of money that poured into crypto funds in the second half of 2021.

The largest crypto asset fund manager in the world, Grayscale, reported a slight dip in its flagship Bitcoin Trust which is now worth $ 25,7 billion. There has been no change in weekly fund flows according to the CoinShares report.

The cryptocurrency markets turn bearish

Digital Asset Markets are actually up 2% at the time of writing, but have been beaten in the past couple of weeks. Bitcoin and Ethereum gained just over 3% each on the day, but have been steadily declining over the past fortnight.

Since the beginning of the month, total market capitalization has fallen by 14,5%, or around $ 300 billion. The trend is clearly to the downside and industry analysts and pundits are starting to prepare for a protracted bear market.