Bitcoin appears to have hovered in a narrow range over the past few days but it has managed to pull off a stunning 86% rally since the beginning of the year. The inflows over the past week are indicative of the fact that the world’s premier crypto asset continues to remain the primary focus of investors.
The recovery was not just limited to Bitcoin, as several top altcoins also noted substantial inflows during the same period. This includes Ripple (XRP), which is among the alts with positive inflows.
The digital asset investment firm CoinShares’s latest report revealed that digital asset investment products saw a second week of inflows clocking in $125 million. This essentially brought the last two weeks of inflows to $334 million, representing nearly 1% of total assets under management (AuM).
Such a trend can be attributed to the recent price appreciation that saw the AuM rise to $37 billion during the week, marking the highest point since early June 2022 and matching the average AuM for 2022. Moreover, the trading activity was high at $2.3 billion for the week, well above the $1.5 billion year-to-date average.
Investors focussed particularly on Bitcoin as it witnessed a whopping $123 million in weekly inflows. Interestingly, the inflows of the last 2 weeks represented 98% of all digital asset flows.
Short-bitcoin investment products did not enjoy the same fate and instead recorded $0.9 million of outflows during the same period. It’s the 10th week of outflows in these products which indicated that investors remain confident of BTC’s price trajectory ahead of the halving event. While bearishness for short-bitcoin is visible, it remains still the second-best-performing asset in terms of inflows year-to-date at $60 million.
Meanwhile, altcoins also recorded mild inflows. Ethereum, for one, led with inflows of $2.7 million. Trailing behind it were Cardano and Litecoin, with $0.9 million and $0.3 million, respectively. Multi-asset and Solana, on the other hand, registered minor outflows of $1.8 million and $0.8 million, respectively.
In the case of XRP, the weekly inflows are positive at $0.4 million. The monthly (for June) and yearly numbers are substantially more impressive, standing at $2.8 million and $6 million for the first half of 2023.
The inflows for Bitcoin come at a time when institutional BTC holdings saw a significant uptick. Such a trend is crucial in determining the big picture as high-profile entities actively look for long-term investment opportunities in the leading digital asset and are not focused on price fluctuations.
Bitcoin’s price moving past the $31,000 psychological level was an important milestone in the bear market, but the gains were expected to continue. A recent report by Matrixport stated that BTC bulls are gearing up for the “seasonal surge” as prices tend to rally in July. The firm speculated that Bitcoin could potentially rally towards $35,000. Its year-end projection was said to be $45,000.
