Has October been kind to digital assets?

• Bitcoin saw capital inflows over $16 million.
• Ethereum experienced net selling of $7.5 million, reversing net inflows witnessed in the week before.

Digital asset investment products extended their winning streak to record 3rd straight week of inflows, according to the latest report by crypto asset management firm CoinShares.

Having said that, the capital infusion into institutional crypto products last week was just $15 million, a staggering 80% fall from the previous week’s tally of $78 million. With this, the year-to-date (YTD) inflows stood at $194 million.

Source: CoinShares

Bitcoin sees healthy institutional demand

As expected, the majority of inflows centered around world’s largest crypto asset Bitcoin [BTC], totaling over $16 million. This represented about 72% of the total assets under management (AuM). On a YTD basis, Bitcoin saw aggregated capital inflows of $260 million.

Coinshares added a caveat that the report did not account for the favorable effects of the SEC vs Grayscale development last weekend.

Altcoins experience gloomy week

The fact that inflows into Bitcoin were more than that of the broader digital assets market suggested that altcoins contributed massively to the sell-offs.

The lackluster performance was led by largest altcoin Ethereum [ETH], which experienced net selling of $7.5 million, reversing net inflows witnessed in the week before.  Coinshares stated that the second-largest crypto saw “little appetite from investors” despite a surge in new listings of ETH futures exchange-traded fund (ETF).

Other altcoins like Litecoin [LTC] and Chainlink [LINK] also contributed to the downward pressure, with outflows of $0.28 million and $0.31 million respectively.

On the other hand, Solana [SOL] again turned out to be the outlier. The crypto saw a capital addition of $3.7 million, marking its 29th week of inflows this year. Compared to this, the seventh-largest crypto witnessed just four weeks of net sell-offs in 2o23. SOL has previously been referred to as the “altcoin of choice” by Coinshares.

The report reinforced regional variations in investors’ sentiment. Major European and North American hubs of institutional crypto trading witnessed net influx of funds. However, while Germany recorded inflows in $16 million, the largest market U.S. could muster minimal inflows of just $2.1 million.

Upheaval in the market

The crypto community was in for some drama on Monday. An unverified news regarding approval of spot BTC ETFs shared by a popular crypto news platform propelled BTC to nearly $30,000.

However, as the media outlet realized the blunder and retracted, BTC plunged to $28,000. The episode resulted in big losses to investors’ portfolios.