NEW YORK – Cryptocurrency investment products and funds posted inflows for a sixth consecutive week, as investors view recent regulatory challenges in the sector as buying opportunities, data from digital asset manager CoinShares showed yesterday.
Inflows to the sector hit US$95 million (RM397.8 million) last week, led by investments in bitcoin of US$50.2 million, according to CoinShares data as of September 24.
Over the last six weeks, crypto inflows amounted to US$320 million. For 2021, inflows stood at US$6 billion.
Bitcoin bore the brunt of negative investor sentiment in the last two quarters. Last week’s inflows were just the fourth week out of the last 17. So far this year, inflows into bitcoin have remained robust at US$4.3 billion.
On Friday, China’s most powerful regulators intensified a crackdown on cryptocurrencies with a blanket ban on crypto transactions and mining, hitting bitcoin and other major digital currencies, and pressuring crypto- and blockchain-related stocks.
But, analysts said investors yesterday seemed to have shrugged off the news.
“Once again, we’re seeing some real resilience in bitcoin, which at one stage was pushing US$40,000,” said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda in London.
Bitcoin was last down 0.2% at US$43,108.
Blockchain data provider Glassnode, in its latest research note yesterday, pointed to the “relatively low utilisation of the bitcoin block space”, which can be both a bearish and bullish signal.
It said current transactions on bitcoin are at 175,000 to 200,000 per day, “which are similar to levels seen in the 2018 bear market”.
The CoinShares data also showed ether products as having the second-most inflows last week at US$29 million, as investors look to further improvements in the ethereum blockchain.
However, ether was down 2.1% at US$3,000.88 yesterday.
Assets under management at Grayscale and Coinshares, the two largest digital asset managers, dipped last week to US$38.016 billion and US$3.671 billion, respectively, pressured by the decline in crypto prices following China’s regulations news. – Reuters, September 28, 2021
