Record Investment Outflows of $423 Million Led to Crypto Bloodbath

Last week saw record outflows of $423 million from crypto assets, according to CoinShares.

The report found that the outflows last weekend were likely responsible for bitcoin’s decline to $17,760. Analyst James Butterfill said: “The outflows were solely focussed on bitcoin, which saw net outflows for the week totaling US$453m.”

BTC outflows bring down institutional investments 

Therefore, if bitcoin is removed from the calculations, Ethereum contributed an inflow of around $11 million while other alts also added minor positive flows, aggregating inflows to the extent of $70 million. 

This was Ethereum’s first inflow after 11 consecutive negative sessions according to CoinShares.

In the past week, the BTC market has slid under the $20,000 level twice. Short-bitcoin saw inflows of $15 million due to the launch of the first U.S.-based short investment product in the week in question, the report noted.

Benefits of a crypto bear market

Similar wide margins were last seen in the previous negative peak, in terms of outflows, in Jan at $198 million.

However, in relative terms, Butterfill remarked that the week did not witness the largest negative flows against total assets under management (AuM). 

“This record occurred during the bear market in Feb 2018 where outflows representing 1.6% of AuM were witnessed, while the outflows last week were the third largest on record, representing 1.2% of AuM,” the report noted.

According to FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, the Federal Reserve’s decision to aggressively increase interest rates was the main reason behind the market crash.

But despite the bearish sentiments, some crypto bosses are optimistic about the results of a market downturn. Charlie Silver, founder of Permission.io told Insider: ” There are hundreds of firms that are built on hype and not substance. It will be good for the industry to have them go away.”

“Bear markets are healthy because it resets valuations to reality and flushes out the bad actors. There are many cryptos that are true Ponzi schemes, that pay investors only with new investor money. When the new money dries up the project falls apart,” Silver added.