Digital asset investment products extended a worrying streak last week, marking a fourth consecutive week of net redemptions as investors pulled US$173 million from funds, taking the four-week total to about US$3.74 billion. The week’s flows were choppy. A promising US$575 million of inflows early on gave way to US$853 million of subsequent withdrawals, with a modest Friday bounce of US$105 million after softer-than-expected U.S. inflation data. Trading activity cooled sharply too, with ETP volumes sliding to roughly US$27 billion from the prior week’s blistering US$63 billion.
Macro headlines partly explain the mood. U.S. consumer prices came in cooler than many forecasts in mid-February, stoking fresh speculation about the Federal Reserve easing later in the year and briefly lifting appetite for risk assets across the board. That relief, however, proved fragile as investors weighed the longer-term picture for rates and flows.
Regionally, flows painted a study in divergence. U.S. investors were net sellers, withdrawing about US$403 million, while overseas buyers stepped in for a collective US$230 million of inflows, notably Germany (≈US$115m), Canada (≈US$46.3m) and Switzerland (≈US$36.8m). The split suggests that local regulation, tax timing and investor composition are still shaping where institutions park capital.
Bitcoin vs Altcoins
At the asset level, Bitcoin bore the brunt of redemptions, with roughly US$133 million leaving Bitcoin investment products over the week. The market reaction has been uneven. Bitcoin traded around the high-$60,000s on Monday, stuck below the $70,000 ceiling that has trapped momentum in recent sessions. It is a pattern that has been exacerbated by a slowdown in ETF inflows that had earlier helped fuel the rally.
Ethereum also saw meaningful outflows (about US$85.1 million), and its price held near the US$1,900–2,000 band as traders digested both macro data and protocol-specific flows. Not all tokens were sold off. XRP and Solana continued to attract fresh capital, drawing roughly US$33.4 million and US$31 million respectively last week. It is a reminder that investors remain selective, favoring some altcoins with specific narratives or recent on-chain momentum. XRP changed hands near US$1.50 and Solana was trading in the mid-$80s, showing relative resilience versus the broader retracement.
One curious signal from the flows is that short-Bitcoin products also registered outflows in the past fortnight, a pattern market strategists sometimes observe near bottoms when bearish positioning is trimmed. Whether that signals a durable trough or merely a technical pause will depend on how macro surprises, especially inflation and jobs data, land in the weeks ahead. For now, the story is clear. Institutional money is rotating rather than rushing back, and pockets of altcoin demand are keeping the market from becoming uniformly dire.
