Institutional investors sold $600 million worth of digital assets last week.
The cryptocurrency market opened with a small but widespread sell-off on Monday.
Blue-chip cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are down 2% and 2.6%, respectively. XRP was the only token in the top 10 to post positive price movements, up 5% on the day.
Most tokens are down less than 10%, but there are notable exceptions like ZKsync, which airdropped 17.5% of its token supply and is down 20% after debuting with a market cap of $900 million.
According to CoinShares' latest Digital Asset Fund Flow Weekly Report, last week was the second-worst week of 2024 for institutional investors, as large institutional investors sold $600 million worth of digital assets, “likely as a more hawkish than expected FOMC meeting led investors to reduce their exposure to fixed-assets supply.”
James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares, wrote that last week's bearish stance by institutional investors was almost entirely focused on Bitcoin, the only digital asset to record outflows, with more than $620 million sold.
Ethereum continues its bullish trajectory with a fourth consecutive week of buying. Likely spurred by the inevitable launch of a Spot Ethereum ETF, institutional investors have bought $13 million worth of ETH in the past seven days, bringing their yearly total to $94 million.
Smaller tokens saw minimal inflows and outflows from larger institutions, with Solana seeing $200,000 in outflows. Solana was the only asset outside of Bitcoin to see a sell-off.
Experts Advance ETH ETF Launch Date Predictions
Ethereum continues to garner attention as the market prepares for the imminent approval of a spot ETF.
Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas wrote on June 14 that his team has accelerated the start of trading for an Ethereum ETF product to July 2. Balchunas had previously predicted July 4, despite SEC Chairman Gary Gensler saying on June 13 that the product should launch by the end of the summer.
Balchunas said the SEC sent out comments on the S-1 filings to potential ETF issuers over the weekend. He said the comments were “fairly minor, nothing of note,” and asked for a response within a week.
“They will likely declare it effective next week and try to finish it before the holiday weekend,” Balciunas added.
