Crypto product inflow streak ends at 11 weeks, but BLOK bucks the trend

Crypto investment products, in aggregate, saw net outflows last week — ending an 11-week run of capital injection into such funds.

The net outflows — though slight at $16 million, according to CoinShares — were a departure from a two-plus month streak during which roughly $1.8 billion entered crypto products.

Bitcoin products saw the most outflows, at $33 million, the data shows. Still, trading volume was $3.6 billion last week — above the year’s weekly average, CoinShares research head James Butterfill said in a Monday report.

The outflows come as bitcoin’s price — up about 150% year to date and 14% over the past month — has dipped in recent days.

Bitcoin’s price (BTC) ended the week at about $41,400, Fineqia International research analyst Matteo Greco said in a Monday research note — a 5.5% decrease from the prior week’s closing value of roughly $43,800.

BTC stood at $41,580 at 10 am ET Monday.

“This past week marked the first instance of a weekly price decrease after eight consecutive weeks of price appreciation, signaling anticipated market movements aimed at reducing market leverage,” Greco added.

Altcoins, equity funds buck trend

Ethereum product outflows were $4.4 million, CoinShares data shows. Ether’s price (ETH), at roughly $2,160 Monday morning, is down 2.7% from seven days ago.

Solana offerings notched about $10 million of inflows, with Cardano-, XRP- and Chainlink-related products seeing slight positive flows.

Blockchain equity products brought in $122 million last week, flows nearly identical to the $126 million seen the week prior.

“For many, bitcoin still isn’t accessible, and so it is the next best thing,” Butterfill told Blockworks. “For some, it’s a little lower down the scale of risk and linked to an asset class they are familiar with.”

A majority of that capital has gone into the Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK), which tallied $206 million of net inflows so far in December, according to ETF.com. Roughly $110 million of those flows came last week, according to CoinShares.

BLOK, launched in January 2018, has nearly $850 million assets under management.

The fund’s top two holdings are MicroStrategy and Coinbase, stocks that are up about 288% and 340%, respectively, year to date.

Updated Dec. 18, 2023 at 11:09 am ET: Added quote from CoinShares research head James Butterfill.

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