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Miller Value Fund Files With SEC To Buy Bitcoin Via GBTC Trust Fund

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Bitcoin’s adoption is rising and several new institutions are jumping the bandwagon to reap profits out of the world’s flagship cryptocurrency. BTC Trusts have become wildly popular as it paved the way to ride the growth of the crypto markets by gaining indirect exposure to the crypto-asset.

In the latest development, the asset management fund, Miller Value Fund is all set to enter the cryptocurrency realm.

According to reports, Bill Miller’s investment trust has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] seeking investment exposure to BTC indirectly by investing in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.

The company’s official filing, which was released this week, entailed extensive discussions on the cryptocurrency and also stated that their ‘Opportunity Trust Fund’ is getting into BTC.

The edit explained

“The Fund may seek investment exposure to BTC indirectly by investing in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, an entity that holds BTC. Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is a privately offered investment vehicle, the shares of which are also available over-the-counter. BTC is a digital commodity that is not issued by a government, bank, or central organization.”

The official filing also disclosed that the firm is looking for a 15% exposure via the GBTC trust fund and would stop purchasing once the said cap is reached. Noting the same, Ben Miller’s Trust further detailed,

“BTC has no physical existence beyond the record of transactions on the Blockchain. The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust invests principally in bitcoin. The Fund will not make any additional investments in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust if, as a result of the investment, its aggregate investment in bitcoin exposure would be more than 15% of its assets at the time of investment.”

A quick primer: The Miller Value Partners has $3.5 billion in assets under management [AUM] is essentially operated by Bill Miller, a veteran investor and asset manager.

Miller has been a BTC investor for quite some time now. The news came hours before he penned down a letter touting the premier cryptocurrency as a growing investment. However, the latest announcement will be the company’s first tryst at managing a BTC portfolio for a publically traded fund.

Bitcoin’s Red-hot Rally Comes To Halt; What’s Next?

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Cryptocurrency proponents anticipated Bitcoin to reclaim its fort above $40,000. However, the crypto-asset has been facing quite a stiff resistance at this level. Despite many in the community, counting for the token to bounce back, it has now entered a consolidation phase preceding a few major dips.

So what is holding back the uptrend?

Bitcoin Under Institutional Exhaustion?

Reportedly, the momentum of flows into the $20 billion Grayscale Bitcoin Trust [GBTC] have topped up when four-week rolling averages are taken into consideration. Over the past two weeks, the fund took a plunge of more than 20% through the 22nd of January, which coincided with the significant double-digit pullback in BTC’s price.

The JPMorgan strategists led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou stated,

“At the moment, the institutional flow impulse behind the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is not strong enough for Bitcoin to break out above $40,000.”

The strategists also went on to add that “risk is that momentum traders will continue to unwind BTC futures positions.” Despite the growing uncertainty, it can be safely said that Bitcoin’s latest rally is in no way similar to the 2017 mania that preceded a massive collapse.

Furthermore, data compiled by the crypto-analytics platform, Skew, revealed that the coin’s realized volatility has hit levels as high as March 2020. So what does this mean?

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Bitcoin's Red-hot Rally Comes To Halt; What's Next? 2

During bull runs such as this, price fluctuations involved with BTC are more normal. This is due to the fact that market participants often tend to cash out at different points. Hence, greater volatility in the crypto-asset’s value essentially means more the extent of the deviation from its average price something that is to be expected during the bull run.

It is also important to note that overall the volatility of Bitcoin has gone down significantly while its price and market cap risen over time. If this trend continues, it can be a much-needed respite for the investors who witnessed massive FUDs and selling spark erratic price movements.

Despite the cooling off institutional momentum, Raoul Pal, founder of Real Vision, predicted

“Feels like BTC is getting ready to climb the wall of FUD fear. Positive seasonality and a nice wedge give it a good chance to hit $50k by March.”

Bitcoin Garners Increased Pension Interest Amid Bull Run

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Bitcoin is now valued at $40K while its market cap resides at $751.18 billion. While Bitcoin is increasing without a stop, institutional investors seem to be pouring in their money into the industry. While other coins are catching up, Bitcoin made it clear that it was untouchable as the largest cryptocurrency. Bitcoin’s price movement has reportedly lured in investors eyeing pension funds as well as endowments. Grayscale’s latest CEO shed light on the same in a recent chat with Bloomberg.

Bitcoin Investment Prevails In Several Forms

Grayscale recently revealed that it would stop trading of XRP until the platform got a better picture of the SEC lawsuit against Ripple. Albeit this blip, other assets have been garnering immense traction on the crypto platform. Grayscale’s newest CEO, Michael Sonnenshein spoke to Bloomberg about the latest institutional interest in Bitcoin. He said,

“We’ve started to see participation not just from the hedge fund segment, which we’ve long seen participation from, but now it’s recently from other institutions, pensions and endowments. The sizes of allocations they are making are growing rapidly as well.”

Barry Silbert recently stepped down from his post as the CEO of Grayscale Investments and Michael Sonnenshein took over as the CEO. Sonnenshein had taken over an array of roles in the past seven years at Grayscale itself. Silbert revealed that he wanted to concentrate on his other company, the Digital Currency Group.

The latest bull run brought in major inflows into the Bitcoin Trust. While 2020 was rather disastrous, Grayscale seemed to have had quite a beneficial year. Last year, Grayscale managed around $2 billion in assets, however, Sonnenshein revealed that the crypto platform currently manages over $25 billion in assets.

Elaborating on the limited supply of the king coin, Sonnenshein added,

“So there is definitely an argument to be made about Grayscale and really any other vehicle that may be removing Bitcoin from circulation and putting it into a financial product inherently increasing the scarcity of an already scarce asset. This is a verifiable scarce asset and so when there are mechanisms that are removing them from circulation, that’s inherently making it an even scarcer asset.”

Furthermore, he also pointed out that the crypto rally has surged the demand for Grayscale and the platform reportedly intends to onboard several other employees as it currently harbors only 24 individuals. Sonnenshein stated that the platform would direct its focus on advertising as well as rolling out new products.

Grayscale Hits $23 Billion in AUM as Bitcoin Blasts Past $35k

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Bitcoin’s price has soared wild. Owing to the strong bullish momentum, the crypto fund manager Grayscale has surpassed $23 billion in assets under management [AUM] on the 5th of January, up from $22.8 billion on the 1st of January this year. Since the start of 2020, the platform has increased its holdings by ten times.

Bitcoin has been making and breaking records with each passing day. It crossed yet another milestone of $35.1k before retracing to the press time price of $34.82k. This has paved the way for the altcoin market to register tremendous rally breaching levels not seen since the 2017-2018 bull run.

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The growth that the asset manager has noted in the past couple of weeks has been nothing short of phenomenal. Thanks to the growing customer base of institutions, high net individuals as well as retail investors, the AUM figures have skyrocketed in a short period of time. As Grayscale products continued to attract massive capital inflows, Bitcoin was its largest holdings with a staunching $19.47 billion followed by its Ethereum product [ETHE] at $3.09 billion, Grayscale Litecoin Trust [LTCN] with $178 million.

Taking the opportunity, Grayscale has not only accumulated a massive amount of crypto-assets but has also launched substantial marketing campaigns. One of its most popular was the DropGold. More recently, it launched ‘GoGrayscale’ marketing campaigns to increase awareness about digital assets.

Reportedly, shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust [GBTC] soared by nearly 12% on the 5th of January. This was right after JPMorgan issued an extremely bullish forecast for the price of Bitcoin. A popular JP Morgan analyst went on to claim that Bitcoin could potentially rise as high as $146,000

TWJ had earlier revealed how confident the market has been following the stunning rally. Barry Silbert, the Founder, and CEO of Digital Currency Group which owns the digital asset manager had earlier tweeted,

“You all clearly want Grayscale to hit $20 billion in AUM in 2020. I’ll take it”

Grayscale Now Has $19 Billion in Crypto AUM; Figures Triple

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It is, without a doubt, that Grayscale has effectively cornered the cryptocurrency industry. Bitcoin’s prices have unfolded tremendously over the holiday week, thanks to the growing institutional investor interest as well as the retail FOMO.

Owing to this, the digital asset manager, Grayscale Investments has hit yet another milestone, after it touched $19 billion in assets under management [AUM] on the 28th of December, up from the $16.4 billion announced just last week. With this, the figures have tripled since the start of November.

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Notably, Grayscale’s trust for XRP witnessed a significant decline all the way from $13.7 million AUM a week ago to the current $11.2 million. This can be attributed to the recent SEC-Ripple fiasco which has prompted intense sell-off.

Nevertheless, Grayscale products have attracted massive capital inflows over the course of the year. According to the latest data by the NY-based platform showed that Bitcoin continued to be its largest holdings with a staunching $16.3 billion followed by Grayscale Ethereum Trust [ETHE] at $2.1 billion, Grayscale Litecoin Trust [LTCN] with $151.3 million.

The world’s leading crypto asset management firm had garnered a lot of traction recently due to its DropGold advertising campaign. To top that, the company reported a growing interest in Ethereum earlier this month.

Besides, Ki Young Ju, who happens to be the CEO of CryptoQuant, revealed that out of the total $186 billion Bitcoin realized market cap, 16% is owned by institutional investors. This comes after Grayscale’s third-quarter investment report disclosed that 80% of investments to its products came from institutional investors, which were dominated by hedge.

In addition to the rising Bitcoin price, yet another factor that has made the US-based platform, realy popular among the experienced and the novice traders alike was the weakening dollar which has triggered institutional adoption. Furthermore, it is no news that certain major Wall Street firms have also integrated digital assets in their investment portfolio to hedge against dollar depreciation.

Confident about the massive figures, Barry Silbert, the Founder and CEO of Digital Currency Group which owns the digital asset manager, tweeted,

“You all clearly want Grayscale to hit $20 billion in AUM in 2020. I’ll take it”

Here’s How USDC Whales At Coinbase Are Playing the Bitcoin Game

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Bitcoin frenzy has gripped the world as it went on a fierce rally above $24K. Despite a minor retracement, the world’s premier crypto-asset was being traded at $22,873, at the time of writing. With the new peak, it can be safely said that Bitcoin the new cycle has been gaining a lot of steam.

USDC Whale Deposits in Coinbase

In yet another interesting observation, USDC whales have reportedly been making massive deposits at Coinbase. This was noted by prominent crypto analyst and CEO of CryptoQuant, Ki Young Ju who also revealed that this trend, is most often followed by Bitcoin’s price rallying higher against the US Dollar.

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Rationale

It is important to note that Coinbase is a huge hit among institutional investors, both old and new, especially in the US. Furthermore, the SF-based cryptocurrency exchange has registered a large number of OTC deals since mid-2020. It is no secret that institutional investors or high-net individuals are usually the ones who execute a significant portion of the OTC deals in question.

And according to the analyst, most of these investors have been using the dollar-pegged Coinbase and Circle-backed stablecoin. Both these platforms have a solid reputation which can be attributed to the rise in popularity of the stablecoin as Bitcoin surged to record levels.

Ki Young Ju had previously explained how several on-chain metrics help in estimating several OTC deals. The exec had pointed towards the massive BTC outflows from Coinbase which was around 6000-8000 BTC from exchange to the cold wallets of the users.

 “If Coinbase moves a significant amount of Bitcoins to other cold wallets, it would indicate OTC deals. “

In the second week of December, British investment giant Ruffer LLC reportedly bought $700 worth of Bitcoin via Coinbase, in November this year. Adding to this trend was none other than the leading asset manager, Grayscale’s most popular product- the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust [GBTC], which has been on an accumulating spree, also amassed a massive quantity of the crypto-asset through Genesis Trading which in turn uses the Coinbase OTC desk.

To top that, the ‘Fund Flow Ratio’ also noted a spike in its figures in tandem with Bitcoin’s latest price action. Fund Flow Ratio for all exchanges is essentially the ratio of network transaction volume of exchanges among the entire tokens transferred on the network. And when this value goes up, it basically implies that most of the network transactions are exchange deposits or withdrawals.

Contrastingly, the transaction volumes are originating from non-exchange wallets. As noted by the analyst, since the price is eventually determined on exchanges, massive non-exchange transaction volume is often considered as a bullish signal, and that these transactions include OTC deals.

The exec’s final tweet read:

“Conclusion:
This $BTC bull-run never stops as long as these OTC indicators keep saying institutional-buying.”

 

Grayscale Creates New Record While Its Litecoin product Secures Third-Spot

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Litecoin [LTC] has seen some handsome gains over the past several weeks. Thanks to the continued bullish momentum, the cryptocurrency has now climbed to be the third-largest spot with respect to crypto holding by Grayscale Investments, which happens to be the world’s leading crypto asset management.

Grayscale Litecoin Trust’s  [LTCN] AUM was found to be at $74.8 million trailing behind Grayscale Bitcoin Trust [GBTC] at $10,821 million and Grayscale Ethereum Trust [ETHE] at $1,722 million. As LTCN steadily increased, it surpassed Grayscale Ethereum Classic Trust [ETCG] to secure the third position.

Litecoin Demonstrates Bullish Momentum As It Breaks Several Barriers

First launched in March, Grayscale Litecoin Trust became publicly available in August of this year. Prior to this only accredited investors were able to participate in it. Thanks to the price appreciation of the underlying cryptocurrency, LTCE scored massive investments’ inflow in the third quarter of the year, 1,800% to be specific.

This news comes a month after reports of Grayscale’s Litecoin Trust attracting massive capital inflows emerged. As noted above, the reason for this could be attributed to the positive price action of LTC/USD.  Litecoin has been on a bullish spree along with Bitcoin [BTC] and its peer altcoins this season. It surged all the way to the fifth spot on the cryptocurrency ladder blasting past Bitcoin Cash [BCH] as well Chainlink [LINK].

At the time of writing, LTC was being traded at $81.33.

Reportedly, Grayscale’s Litecoin Trust was found to be trading with a significant premium to spot prices. To top that, LTCN Premium recently scaled above 2300%. This level was recorded as the highest among the Grayscale products.

This positive momentum essentially indicated that market participants, investors, hedge funds, were eyeing to increase their LTC exposure.

Record For Grayscale

With this, Grayscale Investments has become the fastest growing asset manager. It has crossed a whopping $13 billion in assets under management [AUM] on the 15th of December. It has managed to add $1 billion worth of inflows in less than a month, benefiting from the revival of the cryptocurrency industry.

The platform had earlier reported that it had $12.1 million in AUM just a couple of days ago.

Barry Silbert, the CEO of Grayscale’s parent company Digital Currency Group, tweeted,

“Record AUM for Grayscale…$13 billion. Grayscale AUM on Nov 1: $7.6 billion Grayscale AUM today: $13.0 billion”

The 3 Reasons Behind Bitcoin’s 2020 Bull Run: What Was Behind It?

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What’s behind Bitcoin’s 2020 bull run?

Bitcoin has been on a real rollercoaster ride in 2020 – after the uncertainty surrounding the global pandemic sent the cryptocurrency crashing below $5,000 in March, the world’s largest cryptocurrency has produced an almost miraculous recovery towards the all-time high $20,000 level.

Looking at the Bitcoin price chart on CoinMarketCap, we can see a strong upwards trend emerging in the second half of 2020. Bitcoin surpassed the $10,000 milestone in late July, and hasn’t returned below that key price level since.

As Bitcoin fans, let’s take a break from constantly checking live crypto prices in the hopes of finally seeing BTC break above $20,000, and take a look at some of the most important factors that have contributed to Bitcoin’s amazing performance in 2020.

Growing institutional presence in Bitcoin

The 2017 cryptocurrency rally was in large part driven by retail investors, i.e. everyday people who decided to invest some of their money in cryptocurrency as the asset class started showing a strong performance.

The cryptocurrency landscape is quite different in 2020, as we’re seeing a much stronger presence of institutional investors – these are companies and wealthy investors that have the means of single-handedly moving millions and potentially billions of dollars into the cryptocurrency market.

One of the clearest examples of the involvement of institutions in the cryptocurrency market is Grayscale, a company that creates products for investing in cryptocurrency that can be bought in a similar way to buying a stock.

In each consecutive quarter of 2020 so far, Grayscale has broken its own previous records in terms of the amount of money that flowed into its cryptocurrency investment products. In Q3 2020, quarterly inflows broke the magical barrier of $1 billion for the first time in Grayscale’s history, with the company revealing that 84% of the inflows originated from institutional players (primarily hedge funds). The company’s Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which provides investors with exposure to Bitcoin, recorded $719 million in inflows during the quarter.

Established players in the financial markets are also becoming involved in cryptocurrency. Major banks like BBVA and Standard Chartered are reportedly working on cryptocurrency custody and trading solutions, while DBS Bank, the largest bank in Singapore, is working on a trading platform for digital assets. With these major names entering the picture, it will become easier than ever for more institutional players to allocate a part of their capital to the emerging cryptocurrency asset class.

The Bitcoin as a store of value narrative is strengthening

In the early days of the project, Bitcoin was being presented as a form of digital cash with the potential to displace the fiat currencies that we use today on an everyday basis. However, as Bitcoin’s scalability limitations became apparent, the narrative has largely shifted towards Bitcoin being a store of value.

And to be fair, Bitcoin does have many properties that make it very appealing as a store of value – it has a hard cap on its supply (only 21 million BTC can ever exist), new BTC coins are mined at predictable and constant rates, and the network is extremely resistant to censorship and outside interference. In comparison with gold, the most well-established store of value asset, Bitcoin also has the advantage of being almost infinitely divisible and BTC can be cheaply transferred anywhere in the world on a 24/7 basis.

As Bitcoin increasingly becomes perceived as a legitimate store of value, we’re now seeing some companies opting to purchase BTC to protect the value of their holdings against inflation and aggressive money printing. The most prominent examples of this include MicroStrategy, which has purchased over $450 million worth of Bitcoin (with plans to buy more), and Square, which has bought $50 million worth of BTC.

Legendary investors like Paul Tudor Jones and Stanley Druckenmiller have also expressed bullish views on Bitcoin, and have both compared the world’s leading cryptocurrency to gold.

The Bitcoin halving

2020 was the year of the third Bitcoin halving, which happened on May 11. The halving decreased the Bitcoin block reward from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC, constricting the flow of newly mined BTC. The Bitcoin protocol is designed so that miners gradually receive fewer rewards over time until the total supply of BTC is mined. Don’t worry, this won’t happen very soon – according to estimates, the last Bitcoin will be mined in 2140.

While there were fears that the Bitcoin mining industry could suffer heavily because of the halving, the reality is that the Bitcoin network’s hashrate is now significantly larger than it was before the halving in May. Bitcoin halvings happen every 4 years and are generally accompanied by very strong bullish sentiment. As far as fundamental factors are concerned, it’s tough to find something that draws more attention to Bitcoin than its halvings.

Conclusion

The best part about the trends outlined above is that their influence on the Bitcoin market will likely only continue to strengthen in 2021 and beyond. Bitcoin is currently in a very strong position, and we can’t wait to see what the next year brings to the table. While it’s impossible to predict the future exactly, Bitcoin HODLers have plenty of great reasons to be bullish right now.

Gold To Make Space For Bitcoin Under The Spotlight, Predicts JPMorgan Strategists

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Gold and Bitcoin are often resembled to entail similar properties. While gold continues to reign the investment side of many, Bitcoin seems to be catching up. Both the assets have been looked upon as a store of value assets, which has even led to Bitcoin being called “digital gold.” However, a dilemma pertaining to the future of gold has been addressed by analysts at JPMorgan Chase.

Gold Vs Bitcoin

Bitcoin transpired to become a valuable yet controversial asset. The regulations that have been hindering the growth of the king coin seem to have taken a break following Bitcoin’s notable price change. The emergence of Bitcoin from a mere darknet currency to one of the most valuable assets in the globe has put the fate of gold at stake. Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, a quantitative strategist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., along with a few other strategists pointed out that people were steering towards Bitcoin as a significant amount of money was taken out of gold reserves and found shelter at Bitcoin since October.

These strategists further added that this trend would prolong over the course of time. This wasn’t limited to gold and Bitcoin alone as several institutional investors are bound to take a position in crypto assets. Elaborating on the same, the strategists cited that river $2 billion worth of inflows were seen by the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. The outflows for exchange-traded funds backed by gold were a whopping $7 billion. The JPMorgan strategists further added,

“The adoption of bitcoin by institutional investors has only begun, while for gold its adoption by institutional investors is very advanced.”

Gold has been the investors’ favorite for the longest time now. This traditional store of value asset seems to be getting a run for its money by Bitcoin. Another classic example of how digitalization is forcing several to pull the plug on traditional assets.

The banking giant further revealed that only the king coin accounts for only 0.18% of family office assets as opposed to the 3.3% gold ETFs. Despite this, the gold seems to be safe in the short term as gold is still longing for a recovery. Shedding light on the longer term, the strategists said,

“If this medium to longer term thesis proves right, the price of gold would suffer from a structural flow headwind over the coming years.”

Grayscale’s Bitcoin Holdings Surpasses Half a Million

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Grayscale is on fire and rightly so as the platform’s BTC holdings increased more than 2x, and Assets Under Management [AUM] is up more than 4x. The institutional crypto giant Grayscale revealed that it now holds more than 500,000 BTC in its Bitcoin Trust.

This news comes after Grayscale marked this quarter for accumulating its most massive inflow of capital of which its Bitcoin Trust’s assets Under management was observed to be the fastest-growing investment products. Besides, the Managing Director at Grayscale Investments, Michael Sonnenshein recently tweeted that the team has alone accumulated more than $115 million worth of Bitcoin on the 12th of November alone.

Notifying the same, Grayscale had further revealed that it owns $8.35 billion worth of Bitcoins which represented nearly 2.7% of Bitcoin’s outstanding supply. According to the data compiled by Bybt, shares in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust currently represent $15.62 worth of Bitcoin each, with a marker price per share of $18.86 and a premium rate of 20.74%.

Grayscale Bitcoin Trust’s Aggressive Accumulation

Bitcoin Trust which happens to be Grayscale Investments’ popular investment vehicle has remained the most widely selected investment product this year. In its most recent report for the third quarter, the total investments into the digital asset managers fund in those three months alone accounted for more than a billion dollars. Upon adding the first and the second quarters, Grayscale reached record-breaking figures.

This has, in turn, increased the share price of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust [GBTC] by an astounding 63% since the 1st of October 2020.

Launched more than seven years ago, Grayscale is a US-based crypto investment firm that is one of the largest purchasers of Bitcoin in the world. Its rise to immense popularity can be attributed to the fact that the investors were potentially buying the asset as a way of indirectly owning Bitcoin because of several reasons.

Investing in a Bitcoin Trust essentially enables individuals to gain exposure to the cryptocurrency without having to worry about how to store it, and hence conforming with the law or filing separate taxes. Additionally, Grayscale’s Trust offers its investors exposure to the crypto in a tax-friendly way since certain IRA, Roth IRA, as well as other brokerages and investor accounts, would not likely give tax breaks on Bitcoin investment but, will give them for investments of publicly traded trusts.