Last week, as bitcoin broke its all-time price high, institutional investors poured the second-highest amount on record into cryptocurrency funds.
According to a Reuters report citing data from digital asset manager CoinShares on Monday, large-scale cryptocurrency funds saw an inflow of $429 million last week alone. The largest-ever weekly inflow was $468 million seen three weeks ago.
The data showed the sector jumped to an all-time high of $15 billion in assets under management (AUM) for the year so far. By comparison, there was $2.57 billion in AUM at the close of 2019. So far, bitcoin has attracted $4 billion inflows in 2020.
Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $19,920 on Dec. 1 in a sharp rally likely fueled by listed firms making treasury investments in the cryptocurrency, a launch of crypto services by PayPal and bullish billionaire investors.
"We have seen a decisive shift from enquiries of a speculative nature to those that begin with comments such as, ‘bitcoin is here to stay, please help us understand it’,” James Butterfill, investment strategist at CoinShares, told Reuters.
Butterfill also noted that the level of interest is so high, bitcoin is likely only on "the cusp" of institutional adoption.
Bitcoin and associated investment products were the most popular out of the cryptocurrency options among bigger investors last week. The top cryptocurrency by market value took the lion's share of the total AUM at around 334.7 million out of the $429 million across all crypto assets.
Ether came in second place during the same period. It attracted around $87.1 million, likely from investors wanting exposure ahead of the Ethereum network's launch of the Eth 2.0 Beacon Chain and bullish decentralized finance fundamentals.