Ethereum hits its highest ever crypto-market share as investors load up following dramatic May selloff

• Ethereum's market share rose to its highest on record during the last week of May, CoinShares said Tuesday.
• Ethereum's market share of nearly 27% was boosted as investors took advantage of a drop in price during May's crypto market crash.
• Bitcoin investment logged outflows of $4 million last week but inflows remain positive for 2021.

Ethereum's market share leaped to its highest point on record during the last week of May as investors took advantage of a price drop.

Ethereum's market share rose to nearly 27%, becoming the top investment product among crypto assets last week, according to figures from CoinShares released Tuesday. Investors snapped up $46.8 million in ether, the token representing the world's most utilized blockchain.

Ethereum prices and those of other cryptocurrencies were throttled lower as part of a massive selloff in the space, fronted by a plunge in bitcoin below $32,000 as the crypto market faced regulatory threats. Officials in China again said they would crack down on mining and trading of bitcoin, citing environmental and social concerns, and the US Treasury outlined plans to have cryptocurrency transfers of at least $10,000 reported to the Internal Revenue Service.

But that "digital price weakness" also propelled investors to push $74 million in the market as trading wrapped up in May, CoinShares said.

Ether's price hit its lowest point of the month on May 23, sliding by 24% to $1,737.47 from the previous session. The cryptocurrency had already been under pressure the week before as it was knocked down from above $4,000.

"The price correction had a minor impact on investment flows the previous week, but this looks to have recovered, with all product providers seeing inflows," said CoinShares about ethereum. Ethereum eventually trimmed May's price decline to roughly 2%.

Outflows remained focused on bitcoin investment products last week, leaving the world's most traded crypto to log a decline of $4 million. However, inflows into bitcoin investment products were still positive for 2021, at $4.4 billion.

Inflows across crypto assets reached $298.4 million in May, putting total assets under management at $45.1 billion, the analytics firm said.