Bitcoin Forum

Grayscale recently announced through Barry Silbert, the CEO of their parent company; Digital Currency Group, that they would be launching a national ad campaign about crypto on various TV channels from *this week. His tweet read;

Grayscale is a fund managing platform which acts as a medium for customers to indirectly invest in a variety of assets without having to handle them. They launched their Bitcoin trust in 2013 and currently manage a number of digital currencies;
• Bitcoin Trust (BTC)
• Bitcoin Cash Trust (BCH),
• Ethereum Trust (ETH)
• Ethereum Classic Trust (ETC)
• Horizen Trust (ZEN)
• Litecoin Trust (LTC)
• Stellar Lumens Trust (XLM)
• XRP Trust (XRP)
• Zcash Trust (ZEC)
• Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund.

There is no mention of the content of the ads nor the cryptocurrencies it would be centered around, but it would be interesting to see how it would affect publicity.

- Do you think this move would be beneficial to Bitcoin as a currency (and not as an asset managed by a broker)?
- Do you think such ads would be necessary to mass adoption of Bitcoin?
- If you were to structure an ad around Bitcoin, what would the content be?

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Here's a link to the tweet where the ad video was launched: https://twitter.com/Grayscale/status/1292913760982765572?s=20

hmm I think yes, since more people will going to see it, gets curious about it, give it a try and that's it. If people would know how it works, people will most likely make it as a store of value rather than currency, coz there's no way a normal people would do such fee just to experience using bitcoin when cash can do it for them. Investment, this is what most likely the bitcoin will become in the future, there would be more organization that will act as a broker for people.

It is necessary yes, an advertisement target the masses in which will boost the adoption of bitcoin. The more people will demand for it, the more business will credit the use of it.

Ad will take thousands of dollars, which I don't have or even I have I'll just have 3 second advertisement which will make the people be wondering about it.

" Buy Bitcoin ! *wink* *thumbs up* "

https://i.ibb.co/ZV7BybZ/image.jpg (https://ibb.co/37QptPJ)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=_BIDcmh_6Es&feature=emb_logo

https://grayscale.co
http://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/08/06/2074283/0/en/Grayscale-Ethereum-Trust-Files-Form-10-with-SEC.html
"About Grayscale Investments®
Grayscale Investments is the world’s largest digital currency asset manager, with more than $5.2B in assets under management as of July 31, 2020."

This is the largest financial company, which primarily advertises its services and strives to capture a large part of the market on the hype. With their financial resources, they can flood all national televisions with advertising.

Grayscale aren’t messing around are they. This is exactly what we need, pushing bitcoin into the face of average joe is exactly what we need to ensure this bull run is something we’ve never seen before.

As long as they will mention "Bitcoin" "Bitcoin" "Bitcoin". It's definitely a good move by Grayscale.

And people shall realize it that it's Grayscale who talks about bitcoin then they'll start to be serious about it.

a great step to promote bitcoin, but is it promoting them using one of the exchanges or what? how the grayscale concept in promoting bitcoin

I remember in the past people were making topics from time to time about how some rich bitcoiners should make ads for Bitcoin in order to attract more investors to this market. Seems like this is what is happening, but instead of private persons, we have big companies do it, because it would help their business.

I'm hoping they won't shill for shitcoins too much, even for their own sake they shouldn't do it, because it would hurt the reputation of crypto in the long run if they will promote coins like bcash. Whatever short term gains they will see, it's not worth it.

Unlike eWallets, buying and selling Bitcoin still isn't an easy process especially with the elderly. Downloading a wallet out of the many varieties without getting scammed, setting it up, purchasing it from some exchange (lucky if no KYC is actually needed), scan using QR code or copy and paste the address.

Gonna take more than just promoting.

They made a really good high quality ad, impressive. Did Peter Schiff already cried about it on Twitter? Seriously, that´s good news, the more see it, the more accept it, the more use it, the better for everybody. I just don´t think it was necessary to push gold as the enemy, it´s more like the stock market or bonds that BTC fights

It seems that Grayscale are targeting the "average Joe" as their main customer,rather than trying to convince more institutional investors and rich people to put money in the Grayscale crypto funds.
In a though economic situation,this idea doesn't look really good.If I was the CEO of a cryptocurrency fund,I would choose the B2B business model instead the B2C.
Anyway,more exposure for Bitcoin is always good,but we have to remember that Grayscale are promoting their own business.They aren't promoting Bitcoin only.

Altcoins are among their AUM, including BCH, as long as they do not promote it as the real Bitcoin, I dont think it would hurt the reputation of cryptocurrency.

That's true. They will not be promoting bitcoin's usecase but rather its speculative value as their investors do not hold the actual coin. This could still be a positive as Bitcoin accounts for over 80% of their total investments and reflects a growing demand.
More investors would mean they have to buy up more bitcoins, reducing the supply.

They already have targeted institutional market but perhaps even looking for more.

https://twitter.com/Grayscale/status/1291476478358560768


But I don't think that average Joe can invest on them, it's better of us to do self-custody, than using their platform which charges at a premium if I'm not mistaken. So it's really aim for those people who are have deep pockets and willing to invest on crypto sphere. And they have slowly accumulate more bitcoins for them to sell to their rich clients.

I really hope they come up with something similar witty as the ad from 2019. It is educative, makes fun of something the people know but not in an insulting way and is not importunate. A good ad with a clear and again unique presentation could make more people curious. Does someone know if the ad from 2019 was running in a major TV channel?

The commercial was released. It presented Barry Silbert's different funds for altcoins. I reckon institutional investors might begin laughing after doing their research on Ethereum Classic, fork of Ethereum after DAO hack, 51% attackers' favorite target. Horizen, fork of Zcash, they are not anonymous. Stellar fork of Ripple, founder dumps XRP every month after fork. Bitcoin Cash fork of Bitcoin, no comment hehehe.

Here's a link (https://twitter.com/Grayscale/status/1292913760982765572?s=20) to the tweet which contains the ad video for anyone who want to check it out.
It was underwhelming for me, as no publicity was given to the use case of bitcoin. My takes:

• As expected, it wasn't really an ad for Bitcoin (and other altcoins in their AUM) it was rather just a marketing strategy which compared Fiat to digital currencies without highlighting the qualities of their digital assets under management. Would this mean that if CBDCs were launched fiat would become preferable again?

• In the initial tweet, Barry Silbert had used the term 'crypto' but cryptocurrencies was not mentioned in the ad, they rather used the safer option; digital currencies.

• There was no mention of Bitcoin, nor was its logo shown. It was simply mixed-up as a trust with loads of others. If one was to Google search "Bitcoin trust", what was shown, literally all the results would be about grayscale. They had probably used SEO strategies to acquire those key words while presenting them in the ad.

As long as it reaches the targeted audience with the right intentions then it will be good for btc and crypto in general,  what this spacd need is better promotions with right content, top institutions usually take seriously content from organisations like Greyscale perhaps, so lets assume this ads will be somewhat beneficial to btc.

The drop gold video was like 50x better holy crap. Not to brag, but seriously, altcoins aside, this is just so bad that I'm confident that I could've made a far better ad than this. It looks like an ad made by a first time video editor that just grabbed random stock videos on Shutterstock. Even the audio was bad!

https://twitter.com/Grayscale/status/1292931413931708417
"08/10/20 UPDATE: Net Assets Under Management, Holdings per Share, and Market Price per Share for our Investment Products.
Total AUM: $5.8 billion"

https://i.ibb.co/h90bHp0/Ef-Fp023-Xk-AAYWL2.png (https://ibb.co/8skq2Fk)

But what about the TRON or EOS ???
After such advertising, the fund will grow to 6-7 billion.
Ethereum and Bitcoin are 2 real cryptocurrencies, the rest is complete crap.

If I wanted to be a Wall St heavyweight I just could not summon up the gall to offer some of what they're offering.

ETC had yet another 51% attack the other day, not that anyone seems to care any more. Explaining to some pension fund that a script kiddie spent a few bucks to totally destroy their investment would be a tad embarrassing.

There's a disconnect between the aspirations of people hawking this stuff and the competence and solidity of what they're hawking.

Although, some might argue that it takes a certain maximum level of competence for you to be a Wall Street suit, and a minimum level of gall to put your offerings out there.

Not actually spoken to any Wall St people, but definitely to people who believe they're the European/Asian equivalents. They have successfully removed any sense of embarassment from their psyche. It's actually pretty impressive to hear them talk without blinking at anything coming out of their mouths.

I think the ad is not bad. It could be worse. It's a brief history of money, and there's a clear point there that cryptos (okay, digital currencies) are the next step. As for Grayscale trusts, Bitcoin Trust is #1 in that list, and the altcoins are not that bad. Well, apart from Horizen which is significantly behind the other altcoins from the list, and offering ETC after the 51% attack is bad).
Yeah, the ad is not the Bitcoin-centered, but it's not centered around some alts either. Besides, it's just the first ad in the campaign, so perhaps the others will be more specific.

It is very greedy move but I like it as it can surely help the crypto industry to gain more audience coming from TV networks where they are planning to run the ads. I will just hope
that it will not get a negative response from the audience, it will be better if they will make the ads more simple and easy to understand so the viewers can view it as positive ad instead of negative one.

I like to see also whether they will highlight their platform or they will give more space for crypto currencies to be known better in their upcoming ads.

Hopefully its gonna add lot more new users to crypto community which is definitely bring some extra pace for bitcoin. From the beginning bitcoin have faced so many obstacles and most bitcoin users have started their journey by gathering infos from interenet or other sources. Even some social media platforms put restrictions on running crypto related ads. In this situation Grayscale decision of launching tv ads will gonna help lot of people to get introduce with bitcoin.

I expect to be working and the whole media will cover that event. It is something that big whales are pushing the market as well to be bullish as we all wanted to happen. He probably needs our support. And I know it gains attention from those people you've mentioned above, not a guarantee but it seems possible.

Should we expect another 2017 Bullrun? Quite interesting to see how this ad will give an impact on the market flow. I should have to wait for that and don't miss such a thing.

You might have missed their previous #DropGold commercial[1], though while definitely not perfect, it was definitely FAR better in every single aspect that this newer commercial will seem like it was created by a random zero-budget YouTuber.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqy5_QpNd8U
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_ymZbwy9TY

As much as we hate Grayscale's crypto ad, it seems to be a very successful campaign for them as it raises to record their biggest fundraising for a week, a whopping $217 million investment.

https://i.imgur.com/bfhNqCQ.png

https://twitter.com/barrysilbert/status/1294351696752185346

I guess numbers are subjective, they can raised $50-$100M and still call their ad campaign as a success. Although I will commend him for really creating hype on their ETF instrument and good business move on their end.

They already created the hype, the question is are there big companies willing to follow their lead?

Really lame commercial, we don't know how much money they spend on it. But if we conclude that there massive fundraising campaign netted that much amount then we can say that is a success and it reaches more people and could have made them invest on Grayscale specially those who have big and deep pockets and seeing bullishness on the market after the pandemic.

They probably looked at that possibility and sees the money out of it. They never spend that huge amount of having no returns, of course, there should have to be with them. They are entitled to be appreciated of what they do, it is obvious that they have a (hidden) plan for this even wich they could think that they will succeed and have a profitable end. 

Pretty surprising how they show up with that huge amount and not all have been expecting that. They are good at marketing strategy and it find out that it is very effective and could catch attention.

Well that's something that they need to brag about so that investors will look at Grayscale as the top investments company so far. So they are really good at their marketing strategy. Of course, there is Barry to shill the company.

For us crypto traders though, I don't know if we are going to appreciate those ads, perhaps it just pushes crypto again, but we all know that bitcoin at least has becoming one of the best speculative assets so do we really need those kind of ads at all? Or they really target high value crypto investors to pour their money on them?