According to digital asset investment manager CoinShares, the first quarter of 2021 reached a new record for the influx of institutional crypto products.
As reported in CoinShares on April 6 Weekly cash flow Bulletin, the first quarter of this year hit a new record with $ 4.5 billion in inflows compared to $ 3.9 billion in the last quarter of 2020.
He added that the inflows for last week, ending April 2, totaled $ 106 million, which helped push the three-month period total up 11% from the previous quarter. The inflow was down from previous weeks, however, with the week ending March 12 seeing an inflow of $ 242 million.
Although institutional inflows have slowed, CoinShares believes that does not signify a broader slowing trend, as quarterly growth rates tend to vary.
Last week’s entries were dominated by $ 83 million in Bitcoin products, or 78% of the total, and $ 20 million in Ethereum. The overall volumes of Bitcoin investment products represent a relatively small 6.7% share of the total transaction volume for regulated or “ trusted ” cryptocurrency exchanges.
Assets under management for both active and passive crypto investment products hit a record high of $ 59 billion. Grayscale represents the lion’s share of that AUM figure with $ 46 billion, or 78% of the total. The second largest crypto asset fund is CoinShares itself with $ 5 billion in assets under management.
The European digital asset investment firm expanded its institutional products this week with the introduction of a physically backed Litecoin exchange traded product. The new CoinShares investment product will initially be listed on the Swiss regulated crypto exchange, SIX Swiss Exchange.
Litecoin ETP is the third institutional grade product the company launched in 2021. It follows a physically backed Bitcoin ETP in January and a similar one for Ethereum in February.
On April 1, TBEN announced that CoinShares had entered into a partnership with Canadian investment fund manager 3iQ to launch a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in Canada.
3iQ launched Canada’s first institutional Bitcoin fund in April 2020 and currently has $ 1.7 billion in assets under management according to the CoinShares report.
