An analysis said demand for bitcoin investment is picking up again. About $1 billion was put to work on U.S. wealth platform iTrustCapital last quarter, and hundreds of millions of dollars of clients' cash-like assets shifted into bitcoin purchases.

Bitcoin Magazine reported on Oct. 5 that iTrustCapital Chief Executive Kevin Maloney (케빈 말로니) said such fund flows have recently appeared on the company's platform.

Maloney said iTrustCapital has more than 100,000 clients and that recent investing behaviour is different from simple catch-up buying. He stressed that investors are not buying late after seeing prices surge, saying they are not "chasing candles". He said they are adding bitcoin to portfolios as part of asset allocation rather than reacting to short-term price gains.

A particularly notable area is retirement funds. Maloney said retirement investors typically allocate 5 to 15 percent of assets to bitcoin and similar assets. He assessed such funds as "stickier capital" that does not exit easily even with price volatility, compared with short-term trading funds.

Cash on the sidelines is also moving into the bitcoin market. Of the about $1 billion that flowed into the iTrustCapital platform last quarter, hundreds of millions of dollars were identified as coming from clients' existing cash positions.

Maloney interpreted this as a sign that investors are starting to move from watching to actual investing. He said about 50 percent of iTrustCapital clients are currently buying bitcoin.

He said the market environment is not entirely optimistic. Maloney also mentioned investor fatigue and regulatory uncertainty that the crypto market has recently been experiencing. He pointed out that after the Clarity bill vote failed, the market was unable to find direction as quickly as expected.

Even so, he said not all necessary regulatory work has been completed. He said more groundwork is needed to reduce institutional uncertainty and further build a foundation that can connect traditional financial markets with crypto.

iTrustCapital is also expanding its business from existing crypto investing into traditional financial assets such as stocks and exchange-traded funds, or ETFs. Maloney said the product expansion is intended not only for clients seeking returns but also to capture investment demand for traditional financial assets.

He also said that custodians, external providers and the structure linking assets could become new risk factors in the process of connecting crypto and traditional finance. The company also operates a quantitative trading tool called 'Q', but he said a key indicator showing recent investing behaviour lies less in short-term trading functions than in where actual money is moving. Maloney said he is watching the next 18 months while also looking at the macroeconomic environment and bitcoin ETF fund flows.

The market is focusing on the possibility that such fund flows could signal a change in the nature of bitcoin demand. In particular, if long-term investment money flows in, centred on retirement accounts, it could form a demand base different from short-term speculative funds.

Ultimately, the key variables for the bitcoin market ahead are expected to be how long the inflow of long-term money continues and whether regulatory work and expansion of traditional financial infrastructure can support it.