Bitcoin has seen two straight weeks of outflows, while investors have poured money into ether for a third week ahead of a key network upgrade: CoinShares

Ethereum and bitcoin

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Investors pulled their money from bitcoin products for a second straight week in the seven days to July 16, with many likely booking profits on long-held positions, while pouring money into ether for a third week, according to data from CoinShares.

Bitcoin assets saw flows drop 10.4% over the week, while ether saw flows rise 11.7%, according to the company's most recent weekly flows report released on Tuesday.

Bitcoin lost around 7% in value in the week to July 16, when it fell below $32,000. Since then, it has fallen another 6.5% to around $29,720, driven by rising investor risk aversion over the surge in cases of COVID-19 that has battered global markets this week.

Since the currency peaked in April at almost $64,000, it has lost more 50%, although it is still up by over 200% over the last year. CoinShares investment strategist James Butterfill told Insider he believed a portion of the bitcoin outflows were down to longer-standing investors taking profit now in case of a steeper slide over the coming months.

CoinShares

CoinShares

"Most of our funds were launched in 2015 and we saw profit-taking earlier this year and not now. So the outflows we are seeing in some funds is simply due to when individuals first invested, rather than negative sentiment towards bitcoin," he said.

In 2015, bitcoin traded between lows of around $110 and a high of close to $500. It's risen by almost 30,000% since then.

"People that are seeking out, might not necessarily be doing so for bearish reasons, but instead their deciding to profit now, perhaps their line of thinking is that 'I should have sold at $55,000, but it's fallen down to $30,000, so I'll just take profits here because my worry is that the BTC price is not going to do much over the summer," Butterfill said.

Meanwhile, over the last 7 days ethereum's ether token has fallen by around 13% to $1,748.85, Coinmarket cap data shows. After peaking in May above $4,300, much like bitcoin, it's also lost around 50% in value. Over the last 12 months, however, it's up by more than 600%.

Investors are hoping to profit from the upcoming upgrade to the ethereum network. Ethereum 2.0 is scheduled to roll out on August 4 and some investors may be buying, given that the shift will result in supply reduction and the price potentially rising sharply.

Bitcoin products were the only ones that saw outflows in the latest week. The smaller altcoins, together with ether, all registered modest inflows. According to the CoinShares data, which is an accumulation of global flows, XRP and dot saw a 0.3% rise in inflows, while ada saw an increase of 0.4%.

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