Crypto investors remain supportive of digital assets with $127m inflows last week despite geopolitical events
The weekly inflows last week were led by Bitcoin with $95 million poured in by investors –the largest single weekly inflow since early December 2021.
Institutional investors seem to have remained committed to cryptocurrency products and funds despite the recent geopolitical events. Inflows into digital asset investment products totalled $127 million last week, an uptick from the previous week, “suggesting investors remained supportive of digital assets,” said crypto asset management firm CoinShares in its weekly summary of fund flows. Similar to the previous week, the positive inflows had centred in North America with inflows totalling $151 million versus outflows in Europe amounting to $24 million.
The weekly inflows last week were led by Bitcoin with $95 million poured in by investors –the largest single weekly inflow since early December 2021. Likewise, Ethereum saw the second-highest inflows last week totalling $25 million – the largest in 13 weeks.
“Institutions are investing for the long term. They have been continuing to buy bitcoin irrespective of the situation. However, the Russia-Ukraine war has changed the dynamics of cryptocurrencies as a tool to move money. Recently trading volume between the Russian Ruble and bitcoin had gone wild as the country’s fiat currency crashed. So mainstream adoption of crypto can happen during such events. In another case, crypto adoption was spurred in Venezuela last year due to inflation in the country. So, bitcoin has been the asset of crisis,” Hitesh Malviya, Founder, itsblockchain.com told Financial Express Online.
Importantly, Bitcoin had turned more valuable than Russia’s ruble recently in the global ranking of currencies by market cap. According to CoinMarketCap data, crypto currently was the 14th most valuable currency globally with a market cap of 18,964,921 BTC in comparison to the 24th most valuable ruble with an m-cap of 12,581,441 BTC, as per data from CoinMarketCap.com on Tuesday.
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According to data from buybitcoinworldwide.com, of the maximum total supply of 21 million Bitcoins, nearly 4 per cent is held by exchange traded funds (ETFs) like Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, Purpose Bitcoin ETF, 3IQ CoinShares Bitcoin ETF, and others. Public and private enterprises have shares of 1.221 per cent and 0.829 per cent respectively. MicroStrategy, Tesla, and Galaxy Digital Holdings were the top three public holders of Bitcoin while Block.one, The Tezos Foundation, and Stone Ridge Holdings Group were the top three private enterprises globally that owned Bitcoin.
Meanwhile, altcoins had a mixed week of fortunes with outflows recorded in Solana ($1.7 million), Polkadot ($0.9 million) and Binance ($0.4 million) in comparison to inflows into Litecoin ($0.4 million), Cardano ($0.9 million), and XRP ($0.4 million).