According to digital asset investment manager CoinShares, the first quarter of 2021 hit a new record for institutional crypto product inflows.
As reported in CoinShares’ Tuesday “Digital Asset Fund Flows Weekly” bulletin, Q1 of this year hit a new record with $4.5 billion in inflows compared with $3.9 billion in the final quarter of 2020.
It added that inflows for the past week recorded, which ended on Friday, totaled $106 million, helping push the total for the three-month period 11% higher than the previous quarter. The inflow was down on previous weeks, however, as the week ending March 12 recorded a $242-million inflow.
While institutional inflows have slowed, CoinShares believes it is not indicative of a broader slowing trend, as quarterly growth rates tend to be varied.
Inflows for the past week have been dominated by $83 million in Bitcoin (BTC) products, or 78% of the total, and $20 million in Ether (ETH). Overall volumes for Bitcoin investment products comprise a relatively small share of 6.7% of the total trading volume for regulated or “trusted” cryptocurrency exchanges.
Assets under management for both active and passive crypto investment products are at an all-time high of $59 billion. Grayscale makes up the lion’s share of this AUM figure with $46 billion, or 78% of the total. The second-largest crypto asset fund is CoinShares itself with $5 billion in assets under management.
The European digital asset investment firm has expanded its institutional products this week with the introduction of a physically backed Litecoin exchange-traded product. The new CoinShares investment product will be initially listed on Switzerland’s regulated crypto exchange, SIX Swiss Exchange.
The Litecoin (LTC) ETP is the third institutional-grade product the firm has launched in 2021. It follows a physically backed Bitcoin ETP launched in January and a similar one for Ether in February.
On Thursday, Cointelegraph reported that CoinShares had entered a partnership with Canadian investment fund manager 3iQ in order to launch a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund in Canada.
In April 2020, 3iQ launched Canada’s first institutional Bitcoin fund, and it currently has $1.7 billion in assets under management according to the CoinShares report.