Ether (ETH), the native
cryptocurrency of Ethereum, a decentralized blockchain with smart contract
functionality, attracted only US$0.3 in digital asset investment product inflow
last week despite the Shapella Upgrade last Wednesday. There was also “little
activity” in altcoins except Polygon, which saw US$2.1 million of outflows last
week.
The Shapella Upgrade, also called the Shangial Upgrade, is an hard fork that enabled ETH stakers on Ethereum to withdrawal their staked ETH from the Beacon Chain, a blockchain launched on Ethereum in December 2020. The upgrade is the latest major upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain sincethe Merge in September last year.
According to the latest Digital
Asset Fund Flows report by CoinShares, Europe’s largest digital asset
investment and trading group, Bitcoin continues to be the almost sole focus of
investors as investment inflows into the digital assets reached US$104 million
last week.
In the week before the Upgrade,
CoinShares observed that ETH got only “relatively minor”
investment inflows, with the figure coming in at US$0.6 million. In other words, the inflow last week is even
smaller than the pre-Upgrade week. Bitcoin during the week generated US$56
million of inflows, representing 98% of all inflows in that week.
Meanwhile, total inflows into
digital asset investment products last week reached US$114 million. CoinShares
report notes that the figure shows continued improvement in investor sentiment
towards digital assets.
However, the improving sentiment
comes at a time of very low volumes in the Bitcoin market, the report noted. Furthermore, inflows into digital assets over the last one month totaled US$345 million, the report said.
“We believe this is a flight to
safety by investors fearful of the ongoing traditional finance challenges.
Opinion remains divided though, with short bitcoin seeing inflows totaling
US$14.6m last week,” CoinShares explained.
ETH Sees Price Rise, Token
Withdrawal Tops 1M
Meanwhile, after the Shapella
Upgrade last Friday, ETH topped $2,000, reaching its highest point since August
2022. In a survey conducted by cryptocurrency exchange OKX before the Upgrade, 63% of respondents (who
are members of Ethereum) said they expect ETH price to peak at over US$5,000 by
the end of 2023.
As of press time, Ethereum went
down by 2.27% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. However, the
native cryptocurrency still maintains its over $2,000-plus milestone. The
market…
