Bitcoin vs. Ethereum: Which crypto leads the investment products race

The month of August has, by and large, aided the recovery of most of the market’s top cryptocurrencies. The 30-day returns for Bitcoin and Ethereum, for instance, reflected positive values, 22.35% and 35.95% respectively, at the time of writing.

Given the high risk associated with HODLing these crypto assets directly, institutional investors have been on the look-out for other less risky crypto-investment products like ETNs, ETFs and ETCs. In fact, the crypto industry has been growing at a much faster pace when compared to other financial products that expose investors to traditional assets.

A deep dive into stats reveal that Bitcoin and Ethereum investment products remain the most popular picks for investors. However, which crypto among the two is actually leading the race?

The ‘AUM’ tug of war

As per data from CryptoCompare, the total AUM across all the investment product types grew by 57.3% over the past month. Ethereum based products grew at the fastest rate (72.8%), to $13.8 billion and attained its yearly peak with respect to the market share in this space. Yet, Bitcoin remains the most dominant crypto, as its AUM reflected a cumulative of over $38.1 billion.

Among all major institutions, Grayscale’s trusts continue to hold the lion’s share in the aforementioned assets. Skew’s data further pointed out that the value of ETHE’s AUM grew at a much faster pace (42.8%) when compared to that of GBTC (19.2%) over the past month.

Source: Skew

The ‘volume’ tussle

Daily aggregate product volumes witnessed the largest one-month increase since May (up by 46.6%). The surge was largely led by Ethereum products. For instance, ETHE’s daily volumes witnessed a 105.9% spike, while GBTC’s volumes rose only by 17.4% in the same time window. In fact, CryptoCompare’s report mentioned,

“Other Bitcoin products saw their volumes slide – ETC Group’s BTCE and XBT Provider’s Bitcoin Tracker Euro (BTC/EURO), dropped (by) 14.8% and 23.9% respectively.”

Well, volumes take into account both inflows and outflows. Hence, at this stage it should be noted that digital asset investment products experienced weekly net outflows of $22.5 million until the third week of August. The same was largely driven by outflows in Bitcoin and Ethereum products. Interestingly, alongside multi-assets, single-asset products entailing XRP and Cardano (ADA) witnessed net-inflows.

Source: CryptoCompare Report

ETCs, ETNs and ETFs

Among top Exchange Traded Notes and Exchange Traded Funds, ETC Group’s BTCE product was the most traded product, followed by VanEck’s Bitcoin product (VBTC). Notably, 21Shares’ Ethereum ETN (AETH) experienced the largest percentage increase in trading volume (up by 137.4% to $2.5 million) over the past month.

As far as Exchange Traded Certificates are considered, XBT Provider’s Ethereum Tracker One (ETH/SEK) product became the highest traded ETC product in August. This was followed by XBT Provider’s Ether Tracker Euro (ETH/EUR) product.

Source: CryptoCompare Report

Even though Bitcoin continues to dominate the investment product space at this moment, a blind eye cannot be turned towards the pace of Ethereum’s advancements. Evidently, the latter category has performed particularly well when compared to the former over the past month. So yes, ETH is gradually stealing BTC’s “institutional-interest” thunder.