By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Institutional investors pumped $429 million into cryptocurrency funds and products for the week ended Dec. 7, the second highest on record, pushing the sector's assets under management to an all-time peak of $15 billion, according to Monday's data from digital asset manager CoinShares.
At the end of 2019, assets under management stood at just $2.57 billion.
Grayscale, the world's largest crypto fund had $336.3 million in inflows the latest week, lifting its assets under management to more than $12.4 billion. So far this year, Grayscale has amassed inflows of $4.3 billion, the Coinshares report said.
"On an anecdotal level, based on our client conversations over the course of 2020, 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'," said James Butterfill, investment strategist at CoinShares.
"Given the levels of interest, this suggests we are only on the cusp of institutional adoption rather than it cooling down."
The largest weekly inflow on record was $468 million three weeks ago.
Bitcoin products and bitcoin-focused funds attracted inflows of $334.7 million last week. Inflows to the original cryptocurrency have totaled nearly $4 billion so far this year.
The largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization hit a record high just under $20,000 last week but has since stalled at around $19,000. It was last down more than 2% at $18,976.35.
In contrast, gold saw outflows from investment products of a record US$9.2 billion over the last four weeks while bitcoin saw inflows totalling $1.4 billion in the same period, the report said. But inflows into gold products remained higher on the year at $45.7 billion.
Ethereum, the second largest digital currency, had $87.1 million in inflows in the latest period. Investors have become more bullish on ethereum likely because Ethereum management provided greater clarity on the much-awaited upgrades that make the network much more efficient and sustainable, the report said.