Bitcoin (BTC) rallied 40% in January, sparking the largest inflow of institutional money since June 2022, according to data.
In its Digital Asset Fund Flows Weekly report on Jan. 30, digital asset investment and trading group CoinShares confirmed that $117 million was invested in crypto over the last week of the month.
Institutions “unsold” on post-merge Ethereum
Bitcoin is still on the radar as an institutional investment opportunity.
As the latest data from CoinShares shows, it took BTC price action a few weeks to erase previous losses to spark a major reversal in investment habits — and not just in the United States.
“Last week’s US bears appear to have changed their minds with inflows of $117 million, including $26 million from the United States,” CoinShares wrote in a Twitter thread accompanying the report.
“That is three times as much as last week. Total assets under management had risen to $28 billion, up 43% from their November 2022 lows.”
Germany was the surprise leader, accounting for 40% of the week’s tally, followed by Canada.
However, despite the rally in altcoins in sync with Bitcoin, institutions appear to be mostly interested in BTC when it comes to cash.
In CoinShares’ words, “the focus has been almost entirely on Bitcoin,” a fact that hasn’t escaped the notice of market participants eyeing a potential shift in preferences away from the Ethereum-centric DeFi arena.
“This is proof that institutional money is not being sold for the Ethereum thesis,” argued popular Twitter account Pillage Capital.
The numbers also belied testing times for specific altcoins, with CoinShares highlighting Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Stellar (XLM), and Uniswap (UNI). Nonetheless, Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA) and Polygon (MATIC) saw net inflows.
“Multi-asset investment products saw outflows totaling $6.4 million for the ninth straight week, suggesting investors are favoring select assets,” she commented.
Weekly chart of crypto asset flows. Source: CoinShares/Twitter
GBTC declines towards new record discount
After a distinctive comeback of its own, the largest institutional Bitcoin investment vehicle now seems to be running out of steam again.
Related: Bitcoin sees golden cross last hit 2 months before all-time high
Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) traded at a 43% discount to the spot bitcoin price on Feb. 7 after recovering to 36.2% in mid-January.
As Cointelegraph continues to report, following the liquidation of FTX in November, Grayscale is currently in trouble affecting parent company Digital Currency Group.
However, GBTC ran into trouble before that, when Grayscale attempted to force U.S. regulators to convert it into the country’s first Bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund (ETF).
GBTC Premium vs Asset Holdings vs BTC/USD chart. Source: coin jar
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