Institutions continue offloading BTC exposure despite price rebound

Bitcoin funds are still in decline as institutional sentiment remains bearish.

Investments in institutional Bitcoin products have continued to decline this past week.

In its July 26 Digital Asset Fund Flows report, CoinShares notes institutional crypto products have experienced outflows for the third consecutive week, with $28 million exiting the sector during the week ending July 23. As such, the week saw a 170% increase in outflows compared to the $10.4 million for the previous seven days.

The findings revealed that Bitcoin-based funds saw the largest outflows with $24 million, or 85% of combined outflows from crypto products. Monthly outflows for BTC are now at $49 million, although year-to-date flows remain positive at $4.1 billion. CoinShares stated:

“Last week’s outflows suggest negative sentiment still pervades the asset class despite more recent constructive comments from key industry players.”

Ether products also saw outflows of $7.3 million over the week, while multi-asset funds bucked the trend with a net inflow totaling $3.1 million. The report added that multi-asset funds are the only class of crypto investment products that have experienced net inflows for every week of 2021 so far.

Despite the downturn, leading crypto asset manager, Grayscale, recorded an inflow of $2.5 million for the period. Its latest assets under management bulletin reports total assets under management of $33.6 billion as of July 27.

Related: Institutional selling of crypto reaches longest streak since Feb 2018

CoinShares concluded that investment product turnover remains low at $1.7 billion for the week — comprising just 22% of May’s weekly average.

However, CoinShares’ data was recorded before Monday’s bullish market action that saw Bitcoin gain 15% in less than three hours.