New assets totaling $2.9 billion were added to Bitcoin investment products in the United States, setting a new record for weekly inflows, according to a report by CoinShares, a digital asset investment company. This brings the total capital inflow for investment products like spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to $13.2 billion for the year, with $74.61 billion worth of Bitcoin now under custody. Bitcoin products accounted for 97% of the total inflows. CoinShares analyst James Butterfill noted that “digital asset investment products saw record weekly inflows totaling $2.9 billion, beating the prior week’s all-time record of $2.7 billion.”
Interestingly, there has been less investor interest in Ether (ETH) and other altcoin investment products, with their combined inflows for the year being only a small fraction of the total that went into Bitcoin. Despite the record inflow into ETFs, the price of Bitcoin has actually dropped by 7% in the past week and is currently trading at $67,418.
Outside of the United States, there have been record outflows from crypto exchange products, with investors withdrawing $738 million from Bitcoin exchange-traded products on German, Canadian, and Swedish exchanges and moving them to their U.S. counterparts. This is partly due to the lower management fees charged by U.S. Bitcoin ETFs, which can be as low as 0% on a portion of their inflows. Since their approval by the Securities and Exchange Commission in January, U.S. Bitcoin ETFs have captured more than 80% of the spot Bitcoin ETF market share.
The popularity of Bitcoin ETFs has also led regulators in other countries to reconsider their stance on such products. The United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announced on March 11 that it would not object to requests to create a U.K. listed market segment for cryptoasset-backed Exchange Traded Notes. Similarly, Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) received its first spot Bitcoin ETF application on January 29.
Despite inquiries and interest, Vanguard’s outgoing CEO has maintained an anti-Bitcoin ETF stance.