While it was already known that institutional investors were no longer hesitating to bet very big on Bitcoin (BTC) again, their ogre-like appetite is also starting to turn to other cryptocurrencies. From Ethereum (ETH) to Cardano (ADA) to Solana (SOL), a huge wave of money seems ready to flow into altcoins.
More altcoin-oriented investments
While Bitcoin recently found itself at a crucial level just above $50,000, (and despite the solid correction on September 7), the rest of the crypto market seems to be gearing up for potential future waves of investment. Indeed, if the first of the crypto currencies were to go up, the rest of the altcoins would certainly follow – at least, if past situations are any indication.
That doesn’t stop some cryptos from eating into the King Bitcoin’s lead, already going off in early rocket mode before the start is given by the ringleader.
According to CoinShares’ Digital Asset Fund Flows report, released this September 7, nearly 40 percent of last week’s net inflows were allocated to altcoin financial products. In total, purchases of crypto derivatives tracked by CoinShares amounted to $140 million for this week 35 of 2021.
Ethereum, Cardano and Solana: the new darlings of institutional investors?
We can see from the chart below that of the $98 million net (inflows minus outflows) of institutional money that came into the crypto market last week, there was “only” an additional $58.9 million that went into Bitcoin.
The remainder was mostly split between the second and third most valuable crypto currencies, namely the Ethereum network, with $14.4 million, and the Cardano project, for $6.5 million.
Somewhat more unexpectedly, the blockchain startup Solana saw a very large flow of institutional money, with $13.2 million in the last week alone. As a result, SOL crypto-assets under the management of institutional investors grew to a total value of $44 million.
While Bitcoin remains the most conserved of the crypto-currencies, with more than $40.6 billion under management, altcoins have never been as large a share as they are today and now account for about 35% of total crypto-assets under management.
Grayscale Investments remains the big heavyweight among these institutional investors, holding nearly 46.3 billion cryptocurrencies for its wealthy clients alone. And that dominance is unlikely to reverse, as Grayscale regularly adds promising cryptos to its financial products, such as its new DeFi fund that features DeFi projects.
