Cryptocurrencies see outflows in final week of 2021: CoinShares data

business-standard.com:

(Reuters) - The final week of 2021 saw a third straight week of investment outflows from cryptocurrency funds, even as it capped a year of strong inflows into digital asset investment products, data from digital currency manager CoinShares showed.

Outflows from the sector totaled $32 million last week, taking the tally for the last three weeks to $260 million, although the trend was diminishing following record weekly outflows in mid-December, CoinShares said.

For 2021 as a whole inflows hit $9.3 billion, a 36% jump from 2020 as the launch of bitcoin futures ETFs lured big institutional investors. By comparison, the increase in inflows from 2019 to 2020 was 806%.

Total assets under management ended the year at $62.5 billion in 2021 versus just $2.8 billion at the end of 2019, which "represents a maturing industry," said James Butterfill, investment strategist at CoinShares.

Ethereum's inflows doubled to $1.3 billion in 2021 from $920 million in 2020. Bitcoin, by contrast, saw a 16% increase to $6.3 billion, the lowest growth in inflows relative to other digital asset investment products, according to CoinShares.

Bitcoin, last trading at $46.186.55, has lost a third of its value from its all-time high of $69,000 hit on Nov.10. Ether, the currency for the Ethereum blockchain, last exchanged hands at $3,800.20, down about 20% from its November peak.

Blockchain data provider Glassnode, in its latest research report, said across many on-chain measures, "there is a general lack of activity" in bitcoin despite a modestly bullish undertone in supply dynamics.

It added that bitcoins continue to migrate to increasingly illiquid and dormant wallets, while investor profitability and cyclical metrics paint a more bearish picture.

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