Institutional whales dumped billions of dollars out of crypto investment vehicles last week

Crypto asset management giant CoinShares says institutional whales pulled billions of dollars out of crypto investment vehicles last week.

Crypto asset management giant CoinShares says institutional whales pulled billions of dollars out of crypto investment vehicles last week.

According to CoinShares’ latest Digital Asset Fund Flows Weekly Report, published Monday, institutional crypto investment products suffered $2.9 billion in outflows last week.

“Digital asset investment products saw a 3rd consecutive week of outflows, marking the largest weekly outflows on record at a total of US$2.9bn, bringing the three-week total to US$3.8bn. We believe several factors contributed to this trend, including the recent Bybit hack, a more hawkish Federal Reserve, and the preceding 19-week inflow streak totaling US$29bn.

These elements likely led to a mix of profit-taking and weakened sentiment toward the asset class.”

Regionally, the US led in outflows to the tune of $2.87 billion. Switzerland and Canada followed at $73 million and $16.9 million in outflows, respectively, while Germany bucked the trend, adding $55.3 million in inflows.

Crypto king Bitcoin (BTC) took the worst of the negative sentiment, losing $2.6 billion in outflows.

“Despite the significant outflows, the total outflows over the past three weeks are still modest compared to the record inflows of over $10 billion in a single week during the previous bull market. Moreover, it’s worth noting that in the case of Bitcoin, the outflows can be attributed to a single large U.S. investment product that experienced a substantial outflow.”

CoinShares added that the bulk of the outflows occurred in the U.S., which is noteworthy given the recent launch of several spot Bitcoin futures ETF products by major institutions like BlackRock, Invesco, and Point72. These products drew a large amount of interest from institutions and the public alike, leading to a surge in subscriptions for these products.

However, despite the buzz surrounding the spot Bitcoin futures ETF launches, the products ultimately failed to attract significant inflows during the week, the report noted.

“This lack of inflow is surprising considering the significant attention these products received. It’s possible that the pricing of these products, which is typically set at the net asset value (NAV) of the underlying Bitcoin trust, might have deterred new subscriptions. Alternatively, the institutions might already be holding sufficient Bitcoin exposure through private funds or other channels, rendering further subscriptions to these products unnecessary.”

Among other altcoins, Ethereum did not escape the negative sentiment either, seeing a record weekly outflow totaling US$300m. Solana and Ton also saw US$7.4m and US$22.6m outflows respectively.

Altcoins Sui (SUI), XRP and Litecoin (LTC) enjoyed inflows of $15.5 million, $5 million and $1 million, respectively.