Institutional Investors Turn To Competitors As Ethereum Tumbles

As the crypto market has taken a turn for the worse, institutional investors are phasing out their investments in Ethereum. The digital asset had been the victim of multiple outflows that had tanked its total AuM (Assets under management) and this trend has continued this week. Instead of moving to a larger competitor, Bitcoin, institutional investors are now moving to networks that are in direct competition with Ethereum.

Big Money Leaves Ethereum To Algorand

Algorand is one of the leading competitors of Ethereum which has been making waves in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space. Due to this, more institutional investors have been choosing to pitch their tent with the smart contract platform. What this has led to is the movement of institutional investors out of Ethereum and into competitors like Algorand.

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Data from last week shows that while Ethereum continues to fall out of favor with big money, Algorand has been right behind it to soak up all of the inflows. This saw inflows into the DeFi protocol reach $20 million. It is a new high for the digital asset and is evidence of growing interest in other DeFi protocols besides Ethereum.

As for the leading smart contract platform, outflows continue to rock the asset. It saw a total of $11.6 million leaving last week. This has brought its year-to-date outflows to a staggering $250 million. Compared to other altcoins, Ethereum has had the worse luck among institutional investors.

ETH trading below $2,000 | Source: ETHUSD on TradingView.com

These other altcoins, which happen to be DeFi protocols, also recorded inflows for the year. Solana and Tron managed $1.8 million and $0.4 million in inflows respectively, indicating that big money remains bullish on these altcoins.

A Not Too Bad Week

For other coins in the market, last week proved to be not terrible. For example, inflows into bitcoin were $69 million. It may not be as high as other weeks of inflows have been but it speaks volumes about how institutional investors are viewing the market even through the present downtrend. Last week’s inflows brought bitcoin’s year-to-date inflows to $369 million, the opposite of Ethereum, which has been dominated by outflows.

One thing to note though is that BTC’s AuM has declined to the lowest point since July 2021. This is not a direct result of institutional investors not putting money in bitcoin. Rather, it is due to the decline in the value of the digital asset over the last couple of weeks.

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Other vehicles also enjoyed inflows into them. Multi-asset has been a long-time favorite of institutional investors and this shines through even in a bear market as inflows totaled $4.8 million last week. Short bitcoin inflows also reached $1.8 million. 

Across the pond, the European market is starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. After more than a month of consistent outflows, Europe’s inflows reached $15.5 million. However, North America continues to dominate with total inflows coming out to $72 million.

Featured image from CryptoSlate, chart from TradingView.com

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