Digital asset investment products saw the largest single weekly inflows in a year last week, according to a report from European digital asset manager CoinShares. “Bitcoin-related products were the primary asset for inflows, with $188 million, or 94% of the total,” the report said. Short-bitcoin products saw total outflow of $4.9 million, their ninth consecutive week of net exits.
The rush of inflows came alongside a big rally in the price of bitcoin as a number of high-profile traditional financial (TradFi) institutions followed BlackRock’s lead in filing for a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). These applications included re-filings for previously rejected spot bitcoin ETFs from TradFi asset managers like Invesco and WisdomTree.
The European Union (EU) also secured a political deal on new bank-capital legislation, including for crypto assets, after lawmakers sought “prohibitive” rules to keep unbacked crypto out of the traditional financial system. The agreement was announced in a tweet from the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee after a meeting among representatives of the European Parliament, national governments, and the European Commission.
Cryptocurrency custody technology provider Fireblocks has also started offering support for cloud service providers Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, Alibaba Cloud, Thales, and Securosus. The moves are part of Fireblocks’ effort to make its services accessible to a wider range of businesses and allow it to serve a market of banks whose IT infrastructure is deployed on-premise and cloud-based solutions.
OKX has launched “Nitro Spreads,” a feature on its over-the-counter (OTC) institutional liquid marketplace that allows traders to make complex basis trades in one click. Basis trading refers to trading the difference between an asset’s price on two separate markets in an attempt to generate returns, for example, on spot vs. futures markets. OKX’s Nitro Spread automates this kind of trade into one click.