Grayscale Crypto Company Reached $60B AUM, Overtaking Gold ETFs

The Grayscale crypto company reached $60 billion in assets under management surpassing that of the world’s biggest and most liquid gold ETFs as we can see more today in our cryptocurrency news.

The Grayscale crypto company topped $60 billion in assets under management and surpassed the same metrics of SPDR Gold Shares which are the biggest and most liquid gold ETFs-exchange-traded funds in the world. According to the company’s update, Grayscale controls $60.8 billion in AUM compared to SDPR Gold Shares’ current AUM of $58.3 billion.

Grayscale’s assets under management has topped $60 billion https://t.co/HvMnrpAFgd

— Barry Silbert (@BarrySilbert) November 10, 2021

The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust accounts for the huge chunk of Grayscale’s AUM at $43.6 billion while the Grayscale Ethereum Trust holds $14.9 billion. Grayscale had huge ambitions to covert the Grayscale Bitcoin trust into a Bitcoin spot ETF and the firm even filed a formal application with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in October. The SEC rejected each proposal so far but it did approve Bitcoin futures ETFs from Valkyrie, VanEck, and ProShares. Speaking during the Crypto Goes Mainstream event, Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein said that the debate about the approval for an ETF became quite the political issue as members of Congress weighed in with Rep. Tom Emmer and Rep. Darren Sotto sending a bipartisan letter to the SEC chairman Gary Gensler where they questioned why the SEC refused to approve a Bitcoin spot ETF but it approved a Bitcoin futures ETF which tracks the price of the same asset.

The SEC outlined Bitcoin’s volatility and warned the investors. Sonnenshein noted that the entire crypto industry and politicians made the case that if you are fine with derivatives and the futures contracts are deriving their price from the spot market, then users are saying that they are comfortable in the spot market as well.

As previously reported, Grayscale BTC trust hit a 20% discount on the asset and the company is now trying to pivot to a Bitcoin ETF. While the Grayscale Bitcoin trust has a few similar elements with a Bitcoin ETF, it is giving investors exposure to BTC without the need to physically buy or hold the asset with the two being distinct products. GBTC enabled investors to trade the shares in a trust holding bigger pools of BTC while a Bitcoin ETF offers an opportunity to invest the funds that track the price of the underlying asset. Another huge difference is that the GBTC shares are created by Grayscale as the operator of the trust and can be redeemed only for a set period of time.