A rise in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices late last week came after investors went hard into digital asset funds, according to full week data released on Monday.
Data from European asset manager CoinShares shows that such vehicles received the highest amount of inflows since July: a monster $2.2 billion over the course of last week.
Most of the money came from American investors seeking exposure to Bitcoin, CoinShares said, with $2.13 billion worth of inflows last week.
The reason, according to a Monday report, is increasing investor bullishness that ex-President Donald Trump will win next month’s election. The business mogul and Republican candidate for the White House has been far more pro-crypto in messaging than Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
“We believe this renewed optimism stems from growing expectations of a Republican victory in the upcoming U.S. elections, as they are generally viewed as more supportive of digital assets,” the report read.
Trump has now taken the lead ahead of Harris on popular crypto betting platform Polymarket, leading 62% to 38%. Meanwhile, traditional national polls—such as an ABC/Ipsos survey of likely voters released last week—show that Harris is still the favorite, but Trump is closer than he was in weeks prior.
New Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) approved in January give American investors easy, regulated access to the cryptocurrency. The funds have been wildly successful, pulling in over $20 billion in just nine months.
Last week, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust brought in over $1 billion in cash from investors wanting exposure to the biggest digital coin by market cap, making up more than half of all inflows into such U.S. funds for the week.
Investors had slowed down on putting cash into ETFs earlier this fall when it was uncertain what the Federal Reserve would do regarding historically high interest rates. But the central bank decided to cut last month, and investors have again gained an appetite for “risk-on” assets like Bitcoin.
Combined with Trump’s promises for the crypto industry, it’s leading to more bullishness around crypto. The ex-President has branded himself as a crypto-friendly candidate ahead of next month’s election, telling Bitcoiners that all future digital coins should be minted in the U.S. and even launching his own decentralized finance (DeFi) project.
The price of Bitcoin now stands at $67,160, a 2% drop over the past 24 hours, after hitting a 24-hour high of $69,431 on Sunday. It touched an all-time high of $73,737 back in March, and Sunday’s peak was the closest it’s gotten back near that point since June.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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