Institutional Investors Have Pulled $329 Million From Crypto Funds Since April

Investors pulled $62 million from crypto funds last week, bringing the seven-week draw down to $329 million, according to a report by Coinshares on Monday.

Assets under management, or AUM, fell by 1% in the last week. These withdrawals were driven by an uptick in investors cashing in on short positions after prices rose by 56% across different cryptocurrencies in the last year, according to Coinshares.

CoinShares tracks the flow of money in and out of exchange-traded products, mutual funds, and over-the-counter (OTC) trusts that track crypto assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and altcoins.

The largest outflows were seen on the Tron blockchain, which saw $51 million withdrawn in the last week, equaling about 70% of total AUM. However, CoinShares head of research James Butterfill wrote that the reason for this may be from a withdrawal of seed capital rather than “anything more ominous.”

Bitcoin funds took a smaller hit with $2.7 million being withdrawn last week, but the more volatile short-Bitcoin saw $6.3 million in outflows. When investors “short” Bitcoin, they’re selling the token when the price is high for profit rather than holding onto it, with the expectation that it can be bought later at a lower price. Short Bitcoin funds do exactly that, allowing investors to buy shares in them without opening the futures contracts themselves.

The sell-off in short-Bitcoin funds was smaller overall, but it made up about 44% of all outflows among AUM compared to just 0.9% for long-Bitcoin funds, according to the report.

Ethereum funds meanwhile saw $2.7 million in outflows in the last week. Weekly deposits for XRP, Polygon, and multi-asset funds totaled about $1.6 million.

Despite weeks of consecutive pullbacks, the market does not look like it’s heading in a wayward direction.

In a sign that investors were still showing an appetite for digital assets, Coinbase announced last week that it would be launching “institutional-sized” Bitcoin and Ethereum tracked futures contracts for its institutional clients.

These derivatives, sized at 1 BTC and 10 ETH per contract, are priced based on the expected future price of the digital assets. Despite lower trading, both Bitcoin and Ethereum saw their prices go up by more than 50% in the last year, according to CoinMarketCap.