The world’s biggest cryptocurrency asset manager Grayscale is shaking the cryptocurrency market again.
The Grayscales Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) has been intensively buying Bitcoins since its third halving this May. However, the latest reports show that the Trust acquired nearly $185 million worth of Bitcoins within the past week alone.
According to the tweet report by cryptocurrency analyst Kevin Rooke, Grayscale added 19.879 Bitcoins to its Bitcoin Trust last week. This is three times more Bitcoins than it was produced during the previous week. Following his data, the total amount of newly mined Bitcoin was 7.081 the past week.
Including the latest purchase, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust currently manages nearly 400.000 of Bitcoins. This is roughly 2,5% of Bitcoin’s total circulating supply which is 18.4 million at the time of writing.
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The major part (60%) of Bitcoins are already held by institutional investors or individuals as the long term investment. Excluding the 20% of Bitcoins that are considered as lost, only the smallest amount – 19% or around 3.5 million Bitcoins – is left for trading. And having in mind that nearly 20k of Bitcoins are also out of circulating supply, the amount is even smaller now.
The interest keeps growing
The Trust has been accumulating the amount of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency for a while already. Grayscale acquired 1.5 times more Bitcoins than it was minted since Bitcoin halving. According to Rooke’s data, there was 39.544 Bitcoin mined after its halving on May 11. Meanwhile, the number of Bitcoins purchased by Grayscale since then was 53.588.
Grayscale is the leading crypto asset manager for institutional clients like traditional hedge funds. As was reported previously, in times of economic uncertainty these clients are turning towards cryptocurrencies as they find digital assets as a hedge against inflation.
Ethereum also on demand
Despite the increasing demand for Bitcoin, the institutional clients of Grayscale also show interest in other digital coins, including Ethereum. Nearly 40% of them are holding more than one digital currency in their portfolios, the number is 4 times higher compared to 9% of the previous years.
The Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) currently has around $369 million of ETH assets under management. The amount includes over $110 million worth of Ethereum bought by institutional clients within a year and makes ETHE the second biggest cryptocurrency trust alongside the GBTC.
