The world's largest crypto fund manager is offering new trusts that invest in 5 different cryptocurrencies

The world’s largest crypto fund manager is offering new trusts that invest in 5 different cryptocurrencies

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Yuriko Nakao/Getty Images

Grayscale Investments is offering new trusts that invest in five different cryptocurrencies.

The new trusts will invest in Basic Attention and Decentraland tokens, Chainlink, Filecoin, and Livepeer.

Investor demand for digital currencies has never been higher, Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein said.

Digital currency asset manager Grayscale Investments announced Wednesday that it is offering five new investment trusts, bringing its single-asset lineup to 13.

The new trusts are launching into fairly niche segments of the crypto space, with three investing in Chainlink, Filecoin, and Livepeer, which are blockchain-based digital payment systems. One will invest in Ethereum-based Basic Attention tokens, while the fifth will hold coins in the virtual reality platform Decentraland. These trusts are among the first of their kind to solely invest in the digital currencies underlying each investment product.

“Digital currencies have reached an inflection point,” Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein said in a statement. “Investor demand has never been higher, and every day we’re seeing new entrants to what has surely become a bona fide asset class.”

Decentraland is an Ethereum-based blockchain platform where users can operate VR applications. Decentraland

Grayscale said all five trusts are open for subscription by eligible individual and institutional accredited investors. The decision to launch them was based on assessment of investor demand and the integrity of each cryptocurrency, Sonnenshein told Bloomberg in an interview. The asset manager’s biggest product is still its $34 billion Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.

The new cryptocurrencies it has chosen have much smaller market values in comparison to bitcoin. Basic Attention tokens are known to track consumers' time and attention on websites, with the goal of understanding how to efficiently distribute advertising money.

Chainlink runs on the Ethereum blockchain, with a technology that enables delivery of price feeds into decentralized finance applications. Filecoin is a storage service provider that enables anyone to rent spare storage space on their computer, creating a huge source of data storage.

Livepeer is a decentralized video-streaming network for those who wish to add live or in-demand video to their networks. Meanwhile, Decentraland tokens can be used to buy up virtual plots of land and goods and services within its virtual-reality space.

Grayscale said it plans to continue a tradition of creating “novel pathways” for investors to access the opportunities that digital currencies may offer.

Largest Bitcoin Fund Manager Grayscale Launches Five More Crypto Trusts, $LPT Rallies 265% After News

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Leading digital asset manager Grayscale will launch five more cryptocurrency trusts, according to reports from the company’s founder Barry Silbert.

What Happened: “Digital currencies have reached an inflection point. Investor demand has never been higher, and every day we’re seeing new entrants to what has surely become a bona fide asset class,” commented Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein in a press release.

The new trusts will offer investors exposure to five cryptocurrencies – Basic Attention Token ($BAT), Chainlink ($LINK), Decentraland ($MANA), Filecoin ($FIL), and Livepeer ($LPT).

The price of the tokens named in Grayscale’s new trusts rallied after the news, particularly $LPT which gained over 265% in the past 24-hours.

Why it matters: Grayscale Investments manages the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (Btc) (OTCMKTS: GBTC) which is the largest Bitcoin investment vehicle in the space with more than $36.1 billion in assets under management.

At the time of writing, the trust holds over 655,000 units of Bitcoin accounting for over 3.5% of the digital asset’s total supply, making it the largest public holder of Bitcoin to date.

It has often been considered the investment vehicle of choice, particularly for institutions looking for exposure to the digital asset. According to reports, the largest holder of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (NYSEARCA: ARKW) that owns over 8,531,330 shares valued at over $368 million.

Grayscale launching new trusts for these five cryptocurrencies grants an added layer of credibility to them, which may have been the cause for the positive price action seen in these tokens.

The Livepeer token ($LPT) price, in particular, was more positively impacted than the rest because of its relatively smaller market cap and community support. Livepeer ranks 217 in market cap and witnessed a 2036% increase in trading volume in the past 24hours.

The other tokens named by Grayscale all fall within the top 100 coins by market cap but still enjoyed some positive price action. $BAT rallied 33%, $FIL by 26%, $LINK by 8.8%, and $MANA by 28% following the news.

Biggest Bitcoin Fund Provider to Offer Different Crypto Trusts

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(Bloomberg) –

Grayscale Investments LLC, the company behind the world’s largest Bitcoin fund, is offering new trusts to invest specifically in five different cryptocurrencies.

The trusts are delving into still-niche corners of the cryptocurrency universe. Three of the funds will invest individually in the cryptocurrencies Chainlink, Filecoin and Livepeer. One will hold Basic Attention tokens that run on the Ethereum network, while the fifth will invest in coins of the virtual-reality world known as Decentraland.

The trusts are the crypto giant’s first since early 2019, and come after a “robust process” of assessing potential investor demand as well as the integrity of the underlying protocols, according to Grayscale Chief Executive Officer Michael Sonnenshein.

“At any one time, we’re probably maintaining a list of what could be 30 products, could be 40 products that we’re interested in bringing to market,” Sonnenshein said in an interview. “We’re trying to always reconcile where we may find compelling opportunities in the digital assets ecosystem and trying to reconcile where investors are interested in deploying capital.”

The new products bring Grayscale’s total single-asset lineup to 13, with the $34 billion Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (ticker GBTC) the largest.

With Bitcoin’s price hitting new highs, an increasing number of investors may be hesitant to jump in, fearing they’d be getting in at the top of the market. Other coins Grayscale selected have much smaller market values, and some investors may see them as a more attractive entry point right now.

Basic Attention tokens track users’ time and attention on digital properties, as a way to determine how to distribute advertising money. Chainlink – whose token is also Ethereum based – has a technology that essentially delivers price feeds into various decentralized-finance apps.

Meanwhile, Filecoin is a data storage protocol in which users pay to store their files, while Livepeer is billed as a decentralized content delivery network. Lastly, the Decentraland Trust will hold MANA tokens, which can be used to buy virtual plots of land in Decentraland.

Story continues

“There are many Grayscale products that have historically been a little bit before their time, before they began to resonate with investors sufficiently,” Sonnenshein said.

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