Ethereum (ETH) appears to have taken a positive turn in institutional sentiment, with digital investment products offering access to the asset seeing inflows for four straight weeks, according to data from CoinShares.
Prior to this, ETH investment products were in a long 11-week outflow period, which showed an overall outflow since the beginning of the year (YTD). hit to $458 million in mid-June.
According to data According to the latest release of CoinShares’ Digital Asset Fund Flows weekly report, Ether investment products recorded inflows totaling $8.1 million between July 18 and July 22, adding a significant inflow of $120 million to the previous week.
The $120 million figure marks the biggest weekly influx of ETH products since June 2021, with CoinShares suggesting that “investor confidence is slowly recovering” as the long-awaited Ethereum merger nears completion.
Currently, year-to-date flows for ETH investment products have been reduced to $315 million in outflows, compared to $458 million in June.
Other assets
Coinshare data also shows that investment products offering access to bitcoin (BTC) posted the largest inflow last week of $19 million, adding to the previous week when BTC funds generated huge inflows of $206 million.
Notably, while institutional investors have been wary of ETH throughout most of 2022, this outlook on BTC has for the most part remained relatively positive – bar a few hurdles along the way – with BTC products bringing in an inflow of 241.3 million dollars since the beginning of the year.
Merger is Ethereum’s chance to take over Bitcoin, researcher says
In a report shared with Cryptooshala, Singapore-based wealth manager IDEG argued that broader crypto investor sentiment is now starting to turn from neutral to bullish and expects the Ethereum merger to be a key factor in the market recovery.
“Despite delays and minor setbacks in the transition from PoW to PoS for Ethereum, the merger is now scheduled for September 22 – this gives the market a clear “positive growth catalyst”, ”the report says.
The merger is expected to be a major milestone for Ethereum as it will significantly improve network resilience and energy efficiency. However, the major upgrade will not lower gas fees, and Layer 2 is expected to serve this function for the network for the foreseeable future.
*A few quick points to clarify:
-L2s, not a merger, will take care of lower gas prices
– Merging is a change in the consensus mechanism, not an increase in network bandwidth.
– Gas pricing, speed and scalability decisions come from rollups and sharding. https://t.co/nCH9WQ3IAY— Mackenzie Sigalos (@KenzieSigalos) July 25, 2022
Credit : cointelegraph.com