Grayscale Ethereum Trust purchased 48.4% of all ETH mined in 2020.
This is what was detected by a post on Reddit written by the user nootropicat, moderator of the subreddit r/ethtrader.
Some calculations extracted from official documents of the Trust were published in the post and, indeed, as of December 31st, 2019 5,230,200 shares of the Grayscale Ethereum Trust had been issued, but as of April 24th, 2020 these had risen to 13,255,400.
Therefore, from January 1st to April 24th of this year, Grayscale Ethereum Trust issued 8,025,200 shares, which is much more than it had issued before.
This record was already known, but nootropicat reveals that it is even more sensational than it seemed until now.
Each share corresponds to 0.09427052 ETH purchased by the Trust and this means that, in the first four months of 2020, Grayscale Ethereum Trust bought about 756,539 ETH, which corresponds to a value of almost $150 million today.
This figure is actually not particularly high for a fund like this, but it is enormous when compared to the total volume of mined ETH over the same period.
As of December 31st, 2019, there were about 109,094,019 ETH in circulation, while on April 24th, 2020 they had risen to 110,657,265 ETH. This means that around 1,563,245 ETH were mined during this period, with a current value of just over $300 million.
In other words, the 756,539 ETH purchased by the Grayscale Ethereum Trust from January 1st to April 24th, 2020 represents 48.4% of all ETH mined during the same period.
This figure is both significant and sensational because it reveals that Grayscale is becoming a major player in the ETH market.
It is likely that somehow the price of ETH has also been affected, albeit in a variable way.
In fact, at the beginning of the year, one ETH was worth around $130, but by mid-February, it had more than doubled, peaking at over $280. However, at the end of February, an initial drop had brought it back to around $225, only to fall below $100 in mid-March due to the collapse of the financial markets.
Since then, a slow but steady rise has started, which has recently brought it back close to $200, a gain of about 54% since the beginning of the year. Currently, the price is still well below the mid-February highs, and there is no evidence that Grayscale Ethereum Trust has suspended its purchases.
Although the two phenomena are not necessarily related, it is unlikely that purchases of this magnitude have not had any impact on the price.
