Outflows for bitcoin products and funds totaled $98 million, or 0.2% of total assets under management. For the year, total bitcoin inflows amounted to $4.3 billion. In 2020, investors pumped $15.6 billion into bitcoin products and funds, while ethereum inflows reached nearly $2.5 billion, data showed.
Since hitting a record just under $65,000 in mid-April, bitcoin's price has fallen 35%. Bitcoin was down 5.2% at $44,073, driven by tweets from Tesla Inc. chief Elon Musk.
"While it only represented 0.2% of AUM, last week's largest-ever outflows from bitcoin investment products is noteworthy," said Matt Weller, global head of market research at Forex.com.
"Bitcoin's perceived environmental costs are becoming a bigger and bigger part of the narrative, boosting the relative appeal of ethereum and its upcoming transition to the less energy-intense proof-of-stake security model," he added.
Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, continued to post solid inflows of $26.5 million last week, with a total of $910 million so far this year.
The cryptocurrency has been bolstered by the surge in usage of ethereum-based decentralized finance applications, which facilitate crypto-denominated lending outside traditional banking.
Ethereum hit a record high of $4,380.64 last week but was last down 6.3% at $3,358. It has gained about 355% in 2021.
All other digital asset investment products saw inflows as well in the latest week, such as Cardano and Polkadot.
Grayscale remains the largest digital currency manager, with $47.268 billion in assets, down from $49.3 billion at the end of April.
CoinShares, the second-biggest and largest European digital asset manager, oversaw about $6 billion as of last week, up from $5.8 billion in late April.
(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss
