Institutional investors have reduced their bets on the cryptocurrency space, but are still investing in altcoin investment products offering them exposure to Solana ($SOL), $XRP, and Cardano ($ADA), while largely retreating from Bitcoin ($BTC).
According to CoinShares’ Digital Asset Fund Flows report, cryptocurrency investment products saw minor inflows totaling $9.2 million last week, although most inflows were directed at investment products shorting the flagship cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
These bets against BTC came amid a week that saw a multi-year low trading volume totaling $915 million. CoinShares’ report details that cryptoasset price declines have pushed total assets under management down to $27.9 billion, after starting the year at $64 billion.
Regionally, the report shows that Canada, Brazil, Switzerland, and Germany all saw inflows, while negative sentiment came from the U.S., where inflows totaled $800,000 and were mostly into short-Bitcoin investment products.
Bitcoin investment products saw $11.1 million of outflows, while Ethereum investment products saw $2.1 million of outflows. Products shorting BTC saw nearly $18 million in flows, showing institutional investors are betting against BTC.
Products offering exposure to Solana saw $500,000 in inflows, while products offering exposure to XRP saw $200,000 in inflows. Cardano-based investment products saw $100,000 in inflows, while multi-asset products saw $3.3 million in inflows.
While institutions are betting against BTC, blockchain data shows that most cryptocurrency investors have been holding onto their coins throughout the ongoing bear market, as 62% of addresses on the cryptocurrency’s network haven’t sold their coins for more than a year.
As CryptoGlobe reported, earlier this month U.S. stocks and top cryptoassets fell after r comments from the New York Fred President and the governor of the Bank of Estonia suggested that the major central banks are far from getting inflation under control.
John Williams, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said at a virtual event hosted by the Wall Street Journal that he believes there’s a “need to get real interest rates … above zero.”
Madis Müller, governor of Estonia’s central bank, said that he believes “75 basis points should be among the options for September given that the inflation outlook has not improved.” Increasing interest rates is believed to heighten the risk of a recession and is seen as a negative for risk assets such as BTC.
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