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Institutional crypto fund Grayscale purchases 47,000 ETH in a single day Institutional crypto fund Grayscale purchases 47,000 ETH in a single day
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Institutional crypto fund Grayscale purchases 47,000 ETH in a single day

with insights from Grayscale Investments
Institutional crypto fund Grayscale purchases 47,000 ETH in a single day

Photo by Noel Forte on Unsplash

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The crypto investment fund facilitates some of the biggest crypto traders for institutional clients. And its ETH purchases are surging.

Stacking ETH

Crypto investment fund Grayscale picked up over 47,000 ETH yesterday, data from filings showed. The fund additionally purchased over 12,300 Litecoin.

At the moment, Grayscale is one of the only regulated ways for accredited investors in the US to gain exposure to cryptocurrencies. This is made possible via its “Trust” product—a financial instrument that holds a certain amount of spot crypto per share that is offered to clients. This can either be subscribed to or is traded on the over-the-counter market.

This means that every time investors purchase the “Trust” shares on an exchange or subscribe to it, Grayscale has to mandatorily purchase spot crypto on the open market in order to fully back its publicly traded offering.

High demand yesterday for Ethereum led Grayscale to purchase over 47,000 ETH. At press time, this is valued at over $76 million (ETH trades at $1,617), with analysts calling for the asset to reach over $2,000 later this week, and as high as $10,000 later this year.

Ethereum investor Ryan Sean Adams remarked on the purchases in a tweet. “Public companies staking ETH, there’s $4.5b ETH in Grayscale, and ETH futures launch on the CME Monday,” he said, adding:

“The institutions are buying ETH. And they’re just getting started.”

How Grayscale values Ethereum

In a report yesterday, Grayscale also released its thesis on Ethereum. It saw Phil Bonello, the firm’s director of research, and other analysts explore three aspects to value the asset: ETH as money, ETH as a consumable community, and ETH as a cash-generating asset.

The report is only available to accredited investors and follows on the back of a similar report for Bitcoin released in the past year. That one explored Bitcoin as a currency, a store-of-value, and an alternative to gold.

Meanwhile, despite the institutional rush for Ethereum, the asset lags far behind Bitcoin in terms of the assets under management at Grayscale. As of today, the firm locks over $23 billion worth of Bitcoin compared to just $4 billion worth of Ethereum. There’s another $96 million locked up in the Trust of Ethereum Classic, the original Ethereum chain.

But with the institutions coming quick, the list may look different a few months from now.

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