Everything you wanted to know about Grayscale BTC Trust but were afraid to ask!

[fillippone]

Grayscale published their quarterly  full investment report:
Digital Asset Investment Report Q4 2020

Q4 2020 Investment Highlights2
Total Investment into Grayscale Products: $3.3 billion
Average Weekly Investment – All Products: $250.7 million
Average Weekly Investment – Grayscale® Bitcoin Trust: $217.1 million
Average Weekly Investment – Grayscale® Ethereum Trust: $26.3 million
Average Weekly Investment – Grayscale® Digital Large Cap Fund: $1.6 million
Average Weekly Investment – Grayscale Products ex Bitcoin Trust3: $33.6 million
Majority of investment (93%) came from institutional investors, dominated by asset managers.


Year Ended 2020 (“YE20”) Highlights4
Total Investment into Grayscale Products: $5.7 billion
Average Weekly Investment – All Products: $109.8 million
Average Weekly Investment – Grayscale Bitcoin Trust: $90.0 million
Average Weekly Investment – Grayscale Ethereum Trust: $15.2 million
Average Weekly Investment – Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund: $1.4 million
Average Weekly Investment – Grayscale Products ex Bitcoin Trust5: $19.8 million
Majority of investment (86%) came from institutional investors, dominated by asset managers.

I will start with their conclusion:

To quote Thomas Jefferson, “Paper money is liable to be abused, has been, is, and
forever will be abused, in every country in which it is permitted.” 2020 was the year
institutional investors recognized that Bitcoin is a viable option for offsetting the
abundance of paper money and the cumbersome nature of gold. In a world with over
$17 trillion of negative yielding debt, we believe Bitcoin will continue to become a
cornerstone of investors’ portfolios in 2021.
Bitcoin took center stage in the investment community, and Grayscale was fortunate
to be one of the main avenues for investment in 2020, with approximately $5.7 billion
in total inflows. We are proud to be one of the fastest growing asset managers in the
world, and continue to be grateful to investors for entrusting us with over $20 billion
worth of their investments in our products. We look forward to continuing to serve the
investment community as adoption of digital assets accelerates in 2021

In their report, they publish a series of graphs that are very interesting but are largely known if you read this thread: various metrics that underline the success of this fund.

There are a couple of graphs that are original, as they are published on undisclosed information.

	Investor Profile By Type: institutional investors are playing the Lion Share, but Accredited Individuals were noted during last quarter	Investor Profile By Geography: Constant troughout the year

I must admit I am quite disappointed by the lack of information about in-kind purchases. Hope to hear more from them in the future.

Really interesting to read is the vision of Greyscale for 2021: What's next?



I do recommend reading the whole report: it's a good review of a truly incredible year for Grayscale: and even if I am not their biggest fan, I must admit they did an incredible job promoting Bitcoin as a viable asset for investors.


EDIT: Edited adding images from a later message to give this post more visibility

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[figmentofmyass]

In 2020 we saw institutions adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets - in 2021 we may see nation-states follow suit.

governments holding bitcoin reserves---quite an ambitious goal inside just one year! what are the odds of that?

2020 was the year institutional investors recognized that Bitcoin is a viable option for offsetting the abundance of paper money and the cumbersome nature of gold.

this goes along with their #dropgold ad campaign, but i dunno if i buy it. gold has been rallying all year, including new ATHs.

i think it's more about fiat money vs hard money.

I must admit I am quite disappointed by the lack of information about in-kind purchases. Hope to hear more from them in the future.

what do you mean exactly?

and even if I am not their biggest fan, I must admit they did an incredible job promoting Bitcoin as a viable asset for investors.

+1.

[fillippone]

governments holding bitcoin reserves---quite an ambitious goal inside just one year! what are the odds of that?

Well, Deribit just launched the 400,000 USD strike for Dec 21.
This option have a 15% delta.

This is the closest (wrong, as real world probabilities are different from risk neutral ones) answer to your question!

I must admit I am quite disappointed by the lack of information about in-kind purchases. Hope to hear more from them in the future.

what do you mean exactly?

Here, read the OP.
Basically, you can buy Grayscale shares not only with USD, but with your own cryptos.

[fillippone]

Third open day at Grayscale, and another 5,000 BTC gobbled:



The important thing is having a sustained purchase pace: today is the second day in a row with buying above 100,000,000 USD.
I have a feeling that, despite my questioning of the role of the retail buying on this rally, that having GBTC buying large numbers of Bitcoin every day cannot but help the rally.

https://www.coindesk.com/grayscale-raises-700m-in-a-day-its-largest-daily-asset-raise-ever
Michael Sonnenshein, CEO  of digital asset manager Grayscale Investments, tweeted the firm raised more than $700 million on Jan. 15 seeing increased momentum from Q4.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Sonnenshein/status/1350499423734923264?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1350499423734923264%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.coindesk.com%2Fgrayscale-raises-700m-in-a-day-its-largest-daily-asset-raise-ever


In January 2020, Grayscale only has a record of $2 billion which has increase to $27.1 billion in January 15, 2021, this is a significant growth to the company.




https://mobile.twitter.com/Grayscale/status/1350196243524366336?s=20

EDIT: Edited adding images from a later message to give this post more visibility

[thecodebear]

Third open day at Grayscale, and another 5,000 BTC gobbled:



The important thing is having a sustained purchase pace: today is the second day in a row with buying above 100,000,000 USD.
I have a feeling that, despite my questioning of the role of the retail buying on this rally, that having GBTC buying large numbers of Bitcoin every day cannot but help the rally.

Dear god they bought 5000 BTC in a single day! wow.

I would expect these numbers to go down a bit after this week. Probably pent up demand from grayscale investors not being able to buy the past 3 weeks. Just as the last three days before Grayscale closed down before Christmas they averaged like 9k or 10k btc a day from clients rushing to get in.

So Grayscale ended 2020 with what like just over 600k BTC. They might hit like 1.5 million BTC this year.

The ongoing correction has its days numbered when Grayscale alone is buying up this much Bitcoin daily.

[thecodebear]

Apparently there is a new trust opening soon on Wall Street called the Osprey Bitcoin Trust, which is looking to compete with Grayscale as it is the same thing but they are only charging a quarter of the fee Grayscale charges.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-15/bitcoin-fee-wars-erupt-as-upstart-targets-grayscale-s-billions


Will be interesting to see how this does compared to Grayscale. Good for Bitcoin if Wall St trusts compete to lower fees to bring in more big investors to at least paying to buy bitcoin if not actually owning Bitcoin haha.

[Oshosondy]

https://www.coindesk.com/grayscale-raises-700m-in-a-day-its-largest-daily-asset-raise-ever
Michael Sonnenshein, CEO  of digital asset manager Grayscale Investments, tweeted the firm raised more than $700 million on Jan. 15 seeing increased momentum from Q4.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Sonnenshein/status/1350499423734923264?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1350499423734923264%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.coindesk.com%2Fgrayscale-raises-700m-in-a-day-its-largest-daily-asset-raise-ever


In January 2020, Grayscale only has a record of $2 billion which has increase to $27.1 billion in January 15, 2021, this is a significant growth to the company.




https://mobile.twitter.com/Grayscale/status/1350196243524366336?s=20

Will be interesting to see how this does compared to Grayscale. Good for Bitcoin if Wall St trusts compete to lower fees to bring in more big investors to at least paying to buy bitcoin if not actually owning Bitcoin haha.

This will be good because it will bring more competition in term of fee, and an evidence of bitcoin going more institutionalized.

[Charles-Tim]

Q4 2020 Investment Highlights2
Total Investment into Grayscale Products: $3.3 billion
Average Weekly Investment – All Products: $250.7 million
Average Weekly Investment – Grayscale® Bitcoin Trust: $217.1 million
Average Weekly Investment – Grayscale® Ethereum Trust: $26.3 million
Average Weekly Investment – Grayscale® Digital Large Cap Fund: $1.6 million
Average Weekly Investment – Grayscale Products ex Bitcoin Trust3: $33.6 million
Majority of investment (93%) came from institutional investors, dominated by asset managers.


Year Ended 2020 (“YE20”) Highlights4
Total Investment into Grayscale Products: $5.7 billion
Average Weekly Investment – All Products: $109.8 million
Average Weekly Investment – Grayscale Bitcoin Trust: $90.0 million
Average Weekly Investment – Grayscale Ethereum Trust: $15.2 million
Average Weekly Investment – Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund: $1.4 million
Average Weekly Investment – Grayscale Products ex Bitcoin Trust5: $19.8 million
Majority of investment (86%) came from institutional investors, dominated by asset managers.

Copied from, and for more details
https://grayscale.co/insights/grayscale-q4-2020-digital-asset-investment-report/

[fillippone]

<...>

<...>

Copied from, and for more details
https://grayscale.co/insights/grayscale-q4-2020-digital-asset-investment-report/

Both those information you linked here above were already reported on a couple of post a few post behind.
Apparently I wasn't clear enough, letting the message go trough.

I will add some bit of information from your posts to make the message clearer.

[fillippone]

I was thinking about the fact these updates are getting a little bit boring, but today has been truly remarkable!
Looks like Grayscale is trying to recover the bitcoins they didn't buy over the New Year subscription Holiday.


On January 18 they added 16,244 BTC to their fund!



More than 600,000,000 inflows on a single day.
Highest BTC inflow ever.
Highest USD inflow ever.




JPM analyzed the flows and they claim Grayscale needs 100 mios of daily inflows for BTC to break above 40k. I guess they are keeping pace with that!

Grayscale holds the key to Bitcoin hitting $40K, says JPMorgan

As Bloomberg reports, strategists led by Nikolas Panigirtzoglou believe Bitcoin could lose its luster over the short-term unless it can “break out” above $40,000. The flagship cryptocurrency breached that key level on two occasions this month, once in the lead-up to new all-time highs near $42,000 and the other just last week.

The strategists determined that the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which currently has $23 billion in assets under management, will play a crucial role in whether BTC returns to that level or not.

They wrote:

“The flow into the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust would likely need to sustain its US$100 million per day pace over the coming days and weeks for such a breakout to occur.”

Well, I think there is a hint, on the flows we are going to hit in the next week or so...

[thecodebear]

Hold up. So after they took in $700 million on friday in total for all their products, they then did another ~$600 million in Bitcoin alone on Monday?? Or maybe the amount raised on Friday is what they used to buy on Monday, cuz those numbers seem to add up, since they bought over 3 times as much on Monday as they did on Friday.

This quarter is going to be a lot bigger for Grayscale in terms of dollars inflow than last quarter! So they did about $2.85 billion of Bitcoin in Q42020, and just today they did about 20% of that!

[cryptoboss2020]

The question is

Who are the share hodlers of share holders?
Of grayscale!?

[Oshosondy]

The question is

Who are the share hodlers of share holders?
Of grayscale!?

People like us are the investors, but they are reach people, you can also be one.

Send message to this email and be careful of any phishing email: info@grayscale.co if you want to invest with them. This is there recent investment products in below link or just scroll up above a little to see their investment products posted by fillippone.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5256529.msg56075709#msg56075709

To also what to know about Grayscale use the link below which will direct you to the OP board of this thread or go to the OP board.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5256529.0

...

That is great about the big cryptocurrencies institutional investors. These are what I also saw today which makes your point always valid.

Asset manager Grayscale added 18 times more Bitcoin (BTC) than miners added to the supply in just one day on Jan. 18.

'Pay attention' — Grayscale adds 18x the Bitcoin mined supply in one day

As various data sources confirm, Grayscale, which remains the biggest institutional buyer in the Bitcoin space, purchased a total of 16,244 BTC ($607 million) on Monday.

Grayscale daily Bitcoin additions chart. Source: GBTC Bitcoin Tracker/ Twitter


Grayscale Bitcoin holdings vs. BTC/USD chart. Source: CryptoQuant

[fillippone]

<...>

Asset manager Grayscale added 18 times more Bitcoin (BTC) than miners added to the supply in just one day on Jan. 18.

'Pay attention' — Grayscale adds 18x the Bitcoin mined supply in one day

As various data sources confirm, Grayscale, which remains the biggest institutional buyer in the Bitcoin space, purchased a total of 16,244 BTC ($607 million) on Monday.

I understand comparing GBTC buys with mined bitcoins is evocative of scarcity, but this comparison is quite naïve.
I am afraid no miner bother to sell to Grayscale (I think they have more lucrative businesses).
I think Grayscale is slowly eroding the whales, the ones that have been hodling their coins since a long time ago: these people are the natural sellers to GBTC, the one who want to do an in-kind purchase of shares without generating a taxable event.
Those people are the actual supply Grayscale need to address.

[cryptoboss2020]

Grayscale is miracle.

My question is who is the owner of grayscale Michael and silbert are not known before.

What was their background before grayscale?
Bitcoins they Buy with grayscale from Where?
I Don't sell my btc to them. So from where they Buy that big ammount? 
Second where is the grayscale another stuff?  Office cleaners and office Workers of customers representitatives?

The micheal sonershein can manage all this work byhimself?  What are he is Some supermen?




For me it look like a bit of Joke ....

[Oshosondy]

I understand comparing GBTC buys with mined bitcoins is evocative of scarcity, but this comparison is quite naive.
I am afraid no miner bother to sell to Grayscale (I think they have more lucrative businesses).
I think Grayscale is slowly eroding the whales, the ones that have been hodling their coins since a long time ago: these people are the natural sellers to GBTC, the one who want to do an in-kind purchase of shares without generating a taxable event.

Yes exactly, just to tell how Grayscale has been helping resulting to bitcoin being scarce to an extent, there has been statistical data about what you are saying that they are truly buying not directly mined bitcoin but from the whales and people that are selling bitcoin. In November and December, Grayscale really bought bitcoin from the whales that sold. Around the time, the price of bitcoin plunged to $16600 but the institutional investors really helped the price not to go beyond that level and later increased ppossibly bitcoin price could have reduced further like the crash in 2018, and among the institutional investors, Grayscale investment on bitcoin is the largest and so significant. Although there are more retailer investors that invest but institutions especially Grayscale really bought bitcoin from whales that sold which helps bitcoin price not to fall.

My question is who is the owner of grayscale Michael and silbert are not known before.
What was their background before grayscale?

What is most important is that they are well known, and no issue with them with their customers, no scam but a legit company. You can not expect everything to be online like Wikipedia at ones but as the company progress, the founder name will still appear on Wikipedia.

Bitcoins they Buy with grayscale from Where?

Have you being reading what fillippone and some others are posting here at all, if you are reading their posts, you will not ask this question. The bitcoin are bought from the ones sold by bitcoin sellers.

I Don't sell my btc to them. So from where they Buy that big ammount?  Grin

Same question above. From sellers like whales.

Second where is the grayscale another stuff?  Office cleaners and office Workers of customers representitatives?

Headquarters location: New York, NY

Parent organization: Digital Currency Group

[tranthidung]

The inflow chart has some dips or gaps between rising waves or spikes. I can not get figures on the chart but it seems to drop to zero in gaps.

I am not familiar with Grayscale activities and I guess these gaps are correlated with their investment plans (monthly ?). Something like CME future gaps in weekends.

Would you mind explaining it a bit, @fil. please.

[fillippone]

The inflow chart has some dips or gaps between rising waves or spikes. I can not get figures on the chart but it seems to drop to zero in gaps.

I am not familiar with Grayscale activities and I guess these gaps are correlated with their investment plans (monthly ?). Something like CME future gaps in weekends.

Would you mind explaining it a bit, @fil. please.

The graph is actually available on my spreadhseet.
There you can check all the source data and spot if there is any inaccurate or missing data in it.

The gaps you see on the red lines are the days with no inflows in the fund. They are most probably due to a closure in the fund subscriptions, rather than lack of buyers.
GBTC is usually open to subscriptions, but they can actually close the possibility to enter into it at their own discretion (there is an unclear correlation with other metrics on this).
 

[Charles-Tim]

The inflow chart has some dips or gaps between rising waves or spikes. I can not get figures on the chart but it seems to drop to zero in gaps.

I am not familiar with Grayscale activities and I guess these gaps are correlated with their investment plans (monthly ?). Something like CME future gaps in weekends.

Would you mind explaining it a bit, @fil. please.

Yes, the inflow dropped to zero if no one is investing with Grayscale at some moment in time. Taking the graph as an example, you will notice it is plotted in 2 weeks ranges in day on the horizontal axis, I mean the days are differs to the next in 2 weeks. Which means there are some weeks that no inflow at all, like on 13/02/2017 to 26/10/2017, and there are times there are customers that invested heavily with Grayscale, example is on 18/01/2021 which is among the 2 weeks plot from 04/12/2020 to 19/01/2021, during this period you can see inflow when customers are investing, and also a time when no one is investing, the time no customer are investing is when Grayscale closes investment for customers recently that fillippone even commented about in few posts back. Later in this January, Grayscale open investment products available to customers again and people started to invest with them. On 18/01/2021, in just a single day customers invested more than 600,000,000 which is the inflow of that day and can also be seen on the graph.

[cryptoboss2020]

The grayscale team game from the middle of the nowhere!! 
Anyways not my business but they should name themselfes " Great Gstsby " Instead of Grayscale

But yea hh  nobody not heard nothing about them
The micheal sonnershein is very strange person yet very successful...  What was so special he was studying in university? 
To run this grayscale anyone can do it all you need is just a lot of money!! 

Nothing impressive to me!
Even coinbase wich is lame scam have higher


The grayscale website look very poor  nothing really inpressive

But at least they push the bitcoin price Up!
Well I hope they make btc to go 300k+

Let's see