By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investment flows into cryptocurrency funds and products hit a record $1.31 billion last week after a few weeks of small outflows, as investors took advantage of the decline in bitcoin and other digital asset prices, according to the latest data on Monday from asset manager CoinShares.
Total assets under management (AUM) in the industry slipped to $29.7 billion as of Jan. 22, from an all-time peak of $34.4 billion on Jan. 8. At the end of 2019, the total AUM was just $2 billion.
Grayscale, the world's largest digital currency manager, posted assets under management of $24 billion last week, down from $28.2 billion on Jan. 8. CoinShares, the second largest crypto fund, managed assets of $2.9 billion in the latest week, also down from $3.4 billion on Jan. 8.
"We believe investors have been very price conscious this year due to the speed at which prices in bitcoin achieved new highs," said James Butterfill, investment strategist, at CoinShares.
"The recent price weakness, prompted by recent comments from Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Janet Yellen and the unfounded concerns of a double spend, now look to have been a buying opportunity with inflows breaking all-time weekly inflows," he added.
Bitcoin dropped to a low of $28,800 on Friday, after scaling an all-time peak of $42,000 on Jan.8. It was last down 0.5% at $32,124.
About 97% of inflows went to bitcoin, the data showed, with Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency, posting inflows of $34 million last week.
So far this year, volumes in bitcoin have been considerably higher, trading an average of $12.3 billion per day, compared to $2.2 billion in 2020.
Glassnode, which provides insight on blockchain data, said in a report on Monday that bitcoin's net unrealized profit/loss (NUPL) was getting close to exceeding the "belief" range and moving into the "euphoria" range.
Previously, when NUPL entered this range, it signaled a global top in bitcoin's price.