By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss

NEW YORK, (Reuters) – Cryptocurrency funds and products attracted investments of $226.2 millions last week. This marks their eighth consecutive week of inflows according to CoinShares’ Tuesday report.

Inflows of crypto products reached $638M over eight weeks, with $6.3B in year-to date.

According to data from the week ending Oct. 8, $225 Million was nabbed by Riel, who led the charge.

According to James Butterfill (investment strategist at CoinShares), “We believe that the positive sentiment toward bitcoin has been due to constructive statements by Gary Gensler,” the report states. Gensler could allow a bitcoin ETF in the U.S.

A few weeks back, Chairman Gensler of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reiterated his support for Bitcoin ETFs. These futures contracts would be used to invest instead in digital currency.

Bitcoin rose to just over $58,000 for the fifth month, thanks to persistent institutional demand. It is now more popular than ever as investors begin to trust it. The world’s biggest cryptocurrency by market value, Bitcoin, was down 3.6% to $55,402.

About 88% has been gained since bitcoin’s June low of $28,600.

In its most recent research note, Glassnode, a blockchain data provider, stated that bitcoin saw a surge in activity during the first week in October. This suggests new market demand in the fourth quarter.

Glassnode stated, in addition to the rising open interest and the rise of swap funding rates that positive sentiment has started to return to the derivatives market.

As bitcoin continues to gain market share, minor outflows were recorded at $14 million. The market share of the company has dropped from 1 to 24% in assets under management over the week.

Data revealed that other altcoins, such as cardano, solana, and ripple, posted inflows at $12.5million and $3 million, respectively. However, outflows were reported for other digital tokens such as ripple, ripple, and polkadot.

Grayscale and Coinshares managed assets, which are two of the most important digital asset managers in the world, rose last week to $48.4 trillion and over $5 billion.