The asset management firm that invests in cryptocurrencies, Grayscale, owns 150% of all bitcoin extracted by miners during the month of January 2021.
This is a staggering amount: as many as 41,430 bitcoin, i.e. a value of almost $2 billion at the current BTC price. Only in December 2020, Grayscale had announced to have bought another $13 billion.
These data were provided by the Twitter account called Coin98, which deals precisely with the analysis of blockchain data:
. @Grayscale Bitcoin Trust bought almost 1.5 times total #BTC mined during Jan 2021.#GoGrayscale #GoBitcoin #BTC $BTC pic.twitter.com/qGBcJlZkGx
— Coin98 Analytics (@Coin98Analytics) February 8, 2021
Moreover, according to data from the analysis platform Bybt, in total Grayscale currently owns as many as 649.99 thousand bitcoin, of which it has bought 881 in the last 7 days alone.
Grayscale, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
Grayscale has also invested in other cryptocurrencies, like for instance Ethereum. It owns 3 million ETH, equal to $5.4 billion. In addition, the fund also owns Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum Classic, Zcash and even Stellar Lumens. Of note, Grayscale does not hold any Ripple (XRP). After the news of the lawsuit with the SEC involving XRP being suspected of being a security, Grayscale had removed the Trust dedicated to XRP.
In total, Grayscale has surpassed $30 billion in assets under management after only a few years since its founding. Of this, 80% is in its Bitcoin Trust (over $24.3 billion), while 16% is in the Ethereum Trust ($4.9 billion).
Clearly, this fund is not a direct investor, but a passive one: in fact, Grayscale allows its clients to get exposure to crypto assets without having to buy or hold them directly.
This means that Grayscale doesn’t buy for itself but on behalf of large funds or institutional investors so that it also acts as a custodian of cryptocurrencies and doesn’t make its clients worry about their safety.
Finally, it is important to point out that the 30 billion of total managed capital corresponds to 2.6% of the total capitalization of all cryptocurrencies listed on the famous CoinMarketCap site.
