NEW YORK (Reuters)

Investment flows into cryptocurrency funds and products were just US$29 million in the first week of January, down sharply from a record US$1.09 billion in the week before Christmas, according to the latest data on Monday from asset manager CoinShares.

In addition, the data showed pointed profit-taking from record prices, with some investment products seeing outflows.

Nevertheless, total assets under management (AUM) in the industry stood at an all-time peak of US$34.4 billion as of January 8. At the end of 2019, the total was just US$2 billion.

Bitcoin plunged more than 19 per cent on Monday, putting it on track for its biggest one-day drop since March as its surge to a record US$42,000 last week lost steam.

“Bear market plunges and excessive volatility are powerful agents that scare away the uninitiated,” said Edward Moya, senior market analyst, at OANDA in New York.

“But we are initiated and would like to point out that this was to be expected and that we already saw a near-20 per cent decline earlier last week.”

Inflows into bitcoin investment products totaled US$24.3 million in the first week of the year. Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalisation, accounted for US$5.3 million, according to the latest available data.

The data showed that investors pumped US$15.6 billion into bitcoin products and funds in 2020, while ethereum inflows reached nearly US$2.5 billion.

“Bitcoin is still up on the year and the current 22 per cent crash won’t intimidate any of the new institutional money that just hopped onto the crypto bandwagon,” OANDA’s Moya said.

Assets under management in Grayscale, the world’s largest crypto fund, rose to a record US$28.2 billion as of last week.

CoinShares, the world’s second largest crypto fund, showed assets under supervision of US$3.4 billion. Its XBT Provider line of exchange-traded products hit record trading volumes on January 4 of about US$202 million. XBT Provider is a Swedish-based issuer of exchange-traded products listed on Nasdaq Stockholm AB, which is part of Nasdaq Inc and wholly owned by the CoinShares Group.