Bitcoin (BITCOMP) and Ethereum (ETH-X) both experienced a weekend slip after a week of climbing back to previous highs.

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BTC began the week below $45,000 after the flash crash of the week before. Having risen across the week to near $49,000 levels the price collapsed again on Sunday, falling away to now trade around $45,500.

Likewise ETH began the week trading around $3,200 before rising to a high of $3,652 on Thursday. The token began a decline earlier than bitcoin though, falling away from Thursday and across the weekend to now trade below $3,200 - a 13% decline. 

Half of institutional investors hold bitcoin

More than half of institutional investors (52%) now hold bitcoin or other cryptoassets, a major piece of research from Fidelity Digital Assets has found.

The asset manager has published its annual Institutional Investor Digital Assets Study which has found the events of the last year have been a major driver in crypto adoption among institutional investors.

The results demonstrate the appetite of investors for cryptoassets in portfolios with some 80% of Asian investors and 75% of European investors saying they have plans to buy cryptoassets. 70% of Asian investors already hold some form of cryptoasset. 

An impressive 84% of European and US investors expressed an interest in purchasing institutional investment products that contained cryptoassets.

$1 billion of ETH burned

Over 300,000 ETH tokens have been burned since the Ethereum Network completed its London upgrade on 5 August.

The so-called Ethereum Improvement Proposal -1559 (EIP-1559) has now seen around $1 billion-worth of ETH burned since the upgrade was implemented. 

ETH are burned as part of EIP-1559, to create a deflationary environment for the cryptoasset. With each transaction on the network ETH is now burned instead of giving that fee to miners. 

With the burning of ETH, scarcity of the token will grow and theoretically raise prices for the cryptoasset. 

Brevan Howard launches crypto unit

Major hedge fund Brevan Howard has launched a crypto unit to focus on the sector. 

The European hedge fund is one of the largest in the world, but is not a well-known household name. The new unit, named BH Digital will research and manage digital and other cryptoassets.

The announcement is the latest in a line of major global investment institutions announcing a stake in the cryptoasset sector, with Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, BNY Mellon and others looking at investments in the asset class.