By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Inflows into bitcoin products and funds have hit a record $6.4 billion so far this year, data from digital asset manager CoinShares showed, as investors bought the cryptocurrency on more widespread government acceptance and positive momentum.
Bitcoin inflows totalled $95 million last week, representing the largest inflows of all digital assets, while inflows during an eight-week bull run for the cryptocurrency were $2.8 billion, the CoinShares data showed on Monday.
Overall cryptocurrency products and funds posted inflows of $174 million, CoinShares data as of Nov. 5 showed, in a 12th consecutive week of flows from institutional investors.
Bitcoin jumped more than 4% to as high as $66,555 on Monday, approaching the $67,016.50 record high of Oct. 20, while ether, which underpins the Ethereum blockchain, touched an all-time peak of $4,796.44.
"The BTC (bitcoin) price surge is just a confirmation of an incredibly strong market setup that has been developing throughout October," Mikkel Morch, executive director at crypto and digital assets hedge fund ARK36, said.
"As bitcoin exchange balance is at a three-year low while long-term holder supply is at an all-time high, there are simply too few bitcoins available to keep up with the demand."
Investors also poured $31 million into Ethereum products and funds last week. Although Ethereum's market share has declined in recent months as bitcoin's dominance has grown, a recent combination of positive price performance and strong inflow pushed its assets under management to a record $20 billion.
Tron, a digital platform focused on hosting entertainment applications, had inflows of $79 million over the last seven weeks, making it the 8th largest virtual asset in terms of AUM.
AUM at Grayscale and CoinShares, the two largest digital asset managers, rose last week to $55.67 billion and $5.5 billion, respectively.