What is Grayscale? Everything you need to know

Grayscale Investments is one of the major crypto institutions or, more precisely, the largest US crypto asset management company. Accordingly, to receive this title, the company owned more than 50 billion USD in assets under management in 2021.

If you are interested in Grayscale Investments and want to know more information about this company, please take a few minutes to follow the following content from AZCoin!

What is Grayscale Investments?

Grayscale Investments or more simply Grayscale, is a cryptocurrency asset management company founded in 2013. The company’s goal is to facilitate cryptocurrency investing for everyone in the United States. Ky, up to now, is one of the leading crypto organizations in this country.

Digging deeper, we learn that Grayscale is a subsidiary of the Digital Currency Group investment fund that specializes in managing crypto assets and providing opportunities for investors to gain exposure to this asset class. Accordingly, the top product that Grayscale provides is Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), one of the largest Bitcoin trust funds in the world.

Additional information for you is that Grayscale is also honored to be awarded the title of the largest cryptocurrency asset management company in the United States thanks to owning more than 50 billion USD in assets under management as of 2021.

Who is behind the success of Grayscale Investments?

According to the information we learned, Grayscale Investments was founded by Barry Silbert, who is also the founder and CEO of Digital Currency Group (DCG). In other words, he is an extremely important factor in the development of Grayscale.

Besides, there is another character with an equally important role: Michael Sonnenshein, currently holding the role of CEO of the company. He is the key individual in the development and expansion of cryptocurrency investment products, especially Bitcoin and Ethereum Trust.

Besides the two big names mentioned above, we also have Mark Shifke, who is currently the new President of Grayscale replacing Barry Silbert in early 2024. According to the information we have, we know that he is an experienced financial expert, having held the role of CFO of many large companies such as Digital Currency Group, Billtrust, Green Dot,…

Outstanding products of Grayscale Investments

At present, Grayscale Investments provides 2 main types of products. Please follow the upcoming content for detailed information about each type.

Also, if you are interested in content related to investment and finance, why not check out: Multi-Crypto ETF, Relative Strength Index (RSI), Futures-based ETF,…

Single Asset

These are products issued in the form of shares representing the amount of cryptocurrency assets of each trust fund held by Grayscale. Currently, the company is managing 14 trust funds including:

• Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is a trust invested in Bitcoin under the stock code GBTC.
• Grayscale Ethereum Trust is a trust invested in Ethereum under the ticker ETHE.
• Grayscale Ethereum Classic Trust is a trust invested in Ethereum Classic under the stock code ETCG.
• Grayscale Filecoin Trust is a trust invested in Filecoin under the stock code FILG.
• Grayscale Solana Trust is a trust fund invested in Solana under the stock code GSOL.
• Grayscale Stellar Lumens Trust is a trust invested in Stellar Lumens under the stock code GXLM.
• Grayscale Zcash Trust is a trust invested in Zcash under the stock code ZCSH.
• Grayscale Livepeer Trust is a trust fund invested in Livepeer under the stock code GLIV.
• Grayscale Bitcoin Cash Trust is a trust invested in Bitcoin Cash under the ticker symbol BCHG.
• Grayscale Horizen Trust is a trust fund invested in Horizen under the stock code HZEN.
• Grayscale Litecoin Trust is a trust fund invested in Litecoin under the stock code LTCN.
• Grayscale Decentraland Trust is a trust invested in Decentraland under the ticker symbol MANA.
• Grayscale Chainlink Trust is a trust fund invested in Chainlink under the stock code GLNK.
• Grayscale Basic Attention Token Trust is a trust invested in Basic Attention Token in the form of stock code GBAT.

Diversified

These are products in the form of shares of investment funds, allowing investors to access a basket of crypto assets rather than individual assets. There are currently 3 funds including:

• Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund is an investment fund with a portfolio of large-cap cryptocurrency assets under the stock code GDLC.
• Grayscale Smart Contract Platform Ex-Ethereum Fund is an investment fund with a portfolio of crypto assets for smart contract platforms under the stock code DEFG.
• Grayscale Decentralized Finance Fund is an investment fund with a portfolio of crypto assets in the DeFi segment under the stock code DEFG.

What is Grayscale Investments’ premium Fee?

A side note for you about Grayscale Investments is that there exists a concept called premium fees. This is a fee calculated as a percentage of the gap between the real asset price and the asset’s stock.

Accordingly, premium fees will often appear when the demand for buying Grayscale shares increases higher than the demand for buying the original asset. In the opposite situation, when the asset price is higher than the stock price, the Discount fee will appear instead of the Premium.

The purpose of the Premium fee, as explained by Grayscale, is to reduce selling pressure, which can reduce stock prices when compared to real assets.

Conclusion

Finally, we have come to the end of all the information we were able to collect and share about Grayscale Investments. Thank you for taking the time to follow and hopefully we will see you again in the future with other content from AZcoin.