Cryptocurrency inflows reached $785 million last week, with a year-to-date total of $7.5 billion. This represents a complete recovery from the outflows that occurred between February and March.
Ethereum stood out amid positive digital asset investment product inflows. The Petra upgrade and network leadership changes drove this shifted atmosphere.
Petra Upgrade Impacts Coin Inflows Last Week
According to the latest CoinShares report, cryptocurrency inflows totaled $785 million for the week ending May 17. This is a slight decrease from the previous week's $882 million, but marks five consecutive weeks of positive inflows.
These positive cryptocurrency inflows occurred as the market ignored Trump tariffs. Consequently, the United States led in positive inflows. US inflows reached $681 million, comfortably ahead of Germany and Hong Kong, which recorded $86.3 million and $24.2 million respectively.
Looking more closely, BTC slightly decreased compared to the previous week. CoinShares researcher James Butterfield attributes this to US economic indicators.
"Bitcoin recorded $557 million in inflows, a decrease from the previous week, likely due to the Federal Reserve's continued hawkish signals. Short Bitcoin products recorded inflows for the fourth consecutive week, totaling $5.8 million. This reflects investor positioning amid recent price increases." – Report excerpt
Nevertheless, Ethereum was the highlight of last week's cryptocurrency inflows. According to the CoinShares report, cryptocurrency inflows into Ethereum reached $205 million, a significant increase from the previous report's $1.5 million.
Butterfield mentions the optimism surrounding Ethereum's Petra upgrade and the appointment of Thomas Stançak as new co-executive director.
"Ethereum showed outstanding performance with $205 million in inflows last week and $575 million year-to-date. This reflects investor optimism following the successful Petra upgrade and the appointment of new co-executive director Thomas Stançak." – Butterfield
The Petra upgrade was applied to the mainnet on May 7 and represents the network's largest change since the 2022 Merge upgrade. Meanwhile, EIP-7251 adjusts the validator limit to 2048 ETH, and EIP-7702 introduces smart wallet functionality, providing a key step towards account abstraction.
Simultaneously, Thomas Stançak, recently appointed as co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation (EF), has a deep history in Ethereum's core development. His focus is on statelessness to enhance Ethereum's scalability and decentralization, aiming to reduce node storage requirements.
However, statelessness has been deprioritized due to complexity and focus on rollups. Stançak's leadership could change this focus.
"The Ethereum Foundation is pleased to welcome Xiaowei Wang and Thomas Stançak as co-executive directors. This new leadership structure opens an exciting new chapter in the foundation's evolution, and we will continue to support the growing Ethereum ecosystem." – EF said in March.
While Ethereum and other altcoins recorded positive inflows, Solana bucked the trend, recording cryptocurrency outflows of up to $890,000. This aligns with the recent trend of Total Value Locked (TVL) decrease, which has fallen by 64%.
