Digital asset investment products saw inflows of $2.2 billion last week, bringing total inflows this year to a record-breaking $29.2 billion, according to CoinShares‘ latest report.
The strong performance, coupled with recent Bitcoin price increases around $70,000, lifted the sector’s total assets under management (AuM) above $100 billion for only the second time. These levels were last seen in early June 2024, when AuM reached $102 billion.
Meanwhile, the increase in assets has also spurred a surge in trading activity, with weekly trading volumes climbing 67% to $19.2 billion. This figure represents 35% of all Bitcoin trading on leading, reliable exchanges.
James Butterfill, CoinShares’ head of research, attributed the recent surge to investor optimism ahead of the impending US elections where former US president Donald Trump stands against Vice President Kamala Harris.
According to Butterfill:
“We believe euphoria around the prospect of a Republican victory were the likely reason for these inflows as they were in the first few days of last week, as polls have turned, we saw minor outflows on Friday, highlighting how sensitive Bitcoin is to the US elections at present.”
Bitcoin leads with record inflows
A look at the asset flows shows that Bitcoin captured nearly all last week’s inflows, totaling $2.2 billion.
According to the report, US-listed Bitcoin ETFs mainly saw strong interest with $2.22 billion in net inflows—the third-largest weekly inflow on record. BlackRock’s IBIT ETF led the pack, pulling in $2.2 billion. It was followed by Fidelity’s FBTC, which saw around $90 million in inflows.
These numbers show that crypto ETFs continue to attract strong interest. Assets in these funds have grown rapidly and reached about half the level of gold ETFs in a relatively short period.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s recent price surge above $70,000 for the first time since June appeared to have attracted bearish sentiments from traders betting against further price increases. CoinShares reported that the price uptick spurred new inflows of $8.9 million into short-Bitcoin products.
Despite the solid positive sentiments in the market, Ethereum-related products saw modest inflows totaling $9.5 million last week. Butterfill explained that these numbers contrasted with the strong investor interest in Bitcoin and Solana.
Last week, alternative digital assets like Solana, Polkadot, and Arbitrum collectively had around $6.57 million in cumulative inflows.