A new report says institutional investors pumped $429 million into cryptos and cryptocurrency funds in the week ending December 7. The figure, which is the second-highest on record, pushes to the total value of digital assets under management (AUM) to an all-time peak of $15 billion. The largest weekly inflow on record is $468 million seen in November.
Breaking down the latest inflows, the Coinshares weekly report that tracks the flow of money into digital asset funds shows that Grayscale accumulated $336 million or roughly 78% of the $429 million. Following its latest acquisitions, Grayscale has now accumulated $4.3 billion in digital assets in 2020 so far and the fund currently leads the pack with $12.4 billion AUM.
Meanwhile, in his comments following the release of the report, James Butterfill, the investment strategist at CoinShares says:
On an anecdotal level, based on our client conversations over the course of 2020, we have seen a decisive shift from enquiries of a speculative nature to those that begin with comments such as, ‘bitcoin is here to stay, please help us understand it.
Butterfill believes institutional interest and adoption of digital assets is ongoing instead of cooling down.
In the meantime, the data shared by Coinshares shows that gold experienced “outflows from investment products of a record $9.2 billion over the last four weeks while Bitcoin saw inflows totalling $1.4billion.”
Nominally, the combination of a weak US dollar-the consequence of an excessive monetary policy-and the uncertainty spawned by the COVID-19 pandemic is enough to spark a rush for gold. Already, data is showing that inflows into gold are up by $45.7 billion so far in 2020.
Yet as authors of the Coinshares report explain, the $9.2 billion gold reversal shows that “investors are choosing to allocate to bitcoin to help diversify the limited-supply asset component of their portfolios.”
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