Ethereum Struggles to Attract Investors Despite Upcoming Shanghai Upgrade, Healthy Network Fundamentals

cryptonews.com:

It was another bumper week for crypto investments last week. That’s according to the latest Digital Asset Fund Flows Weekly report from CoinShares, who said that digital assets saw investment inflows of $76 million last week.

According to CoinShares, that marked a fourth consecutive week of inflows, which now stand at $230 million since the start of the year, “highlighting a decisive change in investor sentiment for the beginning of 2023”. The report added that total investment assets under management (AuM) has now risen 39% since the start of the year to $30.3 billion, the highest since mid-August 2022.

Healthy investment flows into the crypto space come as prices cling on to impressive gains for the year. Bitcoin and Ethereum are both up around 40% since the start of the year on a combination of factors including 1) macro bets that the Fed won’t have to do too much more tightening in 2023, 2) that post-FTX collapse pessimism was overdone given crypto fundamentals remain sound and 3) increased on-chain and technical signals flashing that the bear market of 2022 is likely over.

Bitcoin continues to dominate investor focus, accounting for 90% of last week’s inflows. Short Bitcoin investment products accounted for the rest of the inflows. “Despite the improving clarity around unstaking, Ethereum saw only US$0.7m of inflows,” CoinShares noted.

Ethereum’s struggles to attract investment flows might come as a surprise to some given 1) strong network fundamentals and 2) the upcoming Shanghai hard fork upgrade. Regarding the former, a recent Bernstein report observed that the Ethereum network has been enjoying an improvement in on-chain activity as of late, with improved activity in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in wake of the launch