According to the CoinShares Digital Asset Fund Flows weekly report on May 22, there was an outflow of $32 million for the past week. It is the fifth week in a row where institutional crypto asset funds have been in the red, and the total has reached $232 million.
However, the outflow was lower than the previous three weeks.
Bitcoin funds represented the most negative sentiment, with $33 million leaving. Ethereum funds, by comparison, only lost $1 million in outflows, CoinShares reported.
The report noted that volumes totaled $900 million for the week, which is 40% below this year’s average. A similar scenario was playing out on centralized exchanges:
“Volumes for the broader market on trusted exchanges hit their lowest level since late-2020 at $20 billion for the week.”
In terms of geographic regions, Germany dominated the outflows with 73% of the total representing $24 million. Outflows of $3.3 million were also seen from Switzerland-based institutional funds. The crypto exodus came in the same week as Europe’s MiCA crypto legislation was approved.
U.S. funds had an outflow of $5.5 million for the week, but there was an inflow of $2.2 million in crypto-friendly Canada. Brazil also saw minor inflows of $1.3 million.
Short Bitcoin funds also saw a minor outflow of $1.3 million for the week leading CoinShares guessing at why:
“It is unclear why there is such coordinated negative sentiment for both long and short investment products.”
Multi-asset altcoin funds saw an inflow of $1.6 million, and there were minor inflows for Litecoin, XRP, and Avalanche funds.
Despite the negative Bitcoin sentiment among institutional investors, BTC hodling has become the primary market narrative, according to Glassnode. In its weekly on-chain report, the analytics provider said:
“What we continue to observe is that the conviction of existing Bitcoin holders remains remarkably high, despite the extreme volatility and immense deleveraging over the last two years.”
Digital asset markets are still consolidating with a 2.7% gain on the day to keep them range-bound. Total capitalization is back to $1.19 trillion, continuing the sideways momentum of the past fortnight.
Bitcoin has added 2.5% to reach $27,400, but there is resistance just above it at $27,600. Meanwhile, Ethereum is up 3.2% to $1,860 at the time of writing. ETH needs to top $1,900 to break out of its sideward channel.
