Ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of Ethereum, a decentralized blockchain with smart contract functionality, attracted only US$0.3 million in digital asset investment product inflow last week despite the Shapella Upgrade last Wednesday. Additionally, there was 'little activity' in altcoins except for Polygon, which saw US$2.1 million of outflows last week.

The Shapella Upgrade, which is also called the Shangial Upgrade, is a hard fork that enabled ETH stakers on Ethereum to withdraw their staked ETH from the Beacon Chain, which is a blockchain that was launched on Ethereum in December 2020. The upgrade is the latest major upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain since the Merge in September last year.

ETH Investment Inflows Lower than Pre-Upgrade

According to the latest Digital Asset Fund Flows report by CoinShares, Europe’s largest digital asset investment and trading group, Bitcoin continues to be the almost sole focus of investors as investment inflows into digital assets reached US$104 million last week.

In the week before the Upgrade, CoinShares observed that ETH got only 'relatively minor' investment inflows, with the figure coming in at US$0.6 million. In other words, the inflow last week is even smaller than the pre-Upgrade week. Bitcoin during the week generated US$56 million of inflows, representing 98% of all inflows in that week.

Meanwhile, total inflows into digital asset investment products last week reached US$114 million. CoinShares noted that the figure shows continued improvement in investor sentiment towards digital assets.

However, the improving sentiment comes at a time of very low volumes in the Bitcoin market, the report stated. Furthermore, inflows into digital assets over the last month totaled US$345 million, the report said.

“We believe this is a flight to safety by investors fearful of the ongoing traditional finance challenges. Opinion remains divided though, with short bitcoin seeing inflows totaling US$14.6m last week,” CoinShares explained.

ETH Sees Price Rise, Token Withdrawal Tops 1M

Meanwhile, after the Shapella Upgrade last Friday, ETH topped $2,000, reaching its highest point since August 2022. In a survey conducted by cryptocurrency exchange OKX before the Upgrade, 63% of respondents (who are members of Ethereum) said they expect the ETH price to peak at over US$5,000 by the end of 2023.

As of press time, Ethereum went down 2.27% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. However, the native cryptocurrency still maintains its milestone of $2,000-plus. Additionally, the market cap of the currency currently stands at about $248.6 billion.

Meanwhile, ETH withdrawals topped 1 million tokens on Sunday, four days after the upgrade on April 12, 2023. As of press time, beaconcha.in data's shows that 1.05 million ETH has been withdrawn from the Ethereum-based Beacon Chain, with 541, 725 withdrawals processed.

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