39 - Grayscale: $10B Bridge to Crypto | Michael Sonnenshein
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Bankless
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 16 November 2020
⏱️ 72 minutes
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Michael Sonnenshein is the Managing Director at Grayscale Investments, the largest digital currency asset management company by far.
You may have seen a GBTC or ETHE products in your Schwab account, a way price exposure to ETH and BTC
...wondered what those things are?
We're going to talk about that today with Michael.
Grayscale has built a bridge for almost $10B to flow into the crypto world, by working inside the legacy system, rather than outside of it.
Listen to this podcast to see how Grayscale is helping promote crypto!
Retail products:
- What Greyscale products can the average, unaccredited retail investor buy today?
- What’s the difference between GBTC/ETHE and an ETF?
- What are the fees?
Accredited investors products ($1m in assets or $200k per year)
- How do accredited investors power the Grayscale trust?
- What narratives that are driving the inflows?
- What are the most popular products with this group?
- Bitcoin Trust: $39.5 million
- Ethereum Trust: $9.0 million
- Large Cap Fund: $1.1 million
Bitcoin Investor Study - what were the takeaways?
Size of Greyscale relative to supply
- How much BTC supply - 400k in June (3-4% of all Bitcoin)?
- As a proportion of mined BTC?
- How much ETH supply do you own?
- Can Grayscale do a staked ETH product? Any other yield-bearing products?
What’s Greyscale’s next move?
- Expanding more outside BTC?
- Getting acquired?
- AUM size?
- Specifically with DeFi?
Action items:
- Read reports Bitcoin Investor Study
- If you’re looking at GBTC or ETHE in your portfolio premium vs spot price first:
- 5 - star reviews the podcast!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. |
| 0:19.9 | This is how to get started, how to get better, and how to front-run the opportunity. |
| 0:24.5 | This is Ryan Sean Adams. |
| 0:25.5 | I'm here with David Hoffman, and we're here to help you become more bankless. |
| 0:31.5 | David, what do you think about today's episode? |
| 0:34.5 | This episode with Michael, Sun and Shine, I thought was really fantastic. |
| 0:38.5 | I've listened to a number of different episodes with Michael and other members of the Grayscale team about what Grayscale is and what they do. |
| 0:45.5 | But I never really felt satisfied with other podcasts and how they approach the subject matter of Grayscale and how Grayscale fits into the rest of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. |
| 0:55.5 | Ryan, I actually thought you did a fantastic job as host on this podcast, and so tip of the hat to you. |
| 1:01.5 | I think the flow of conversation and the topics and some of the things that we talked about really did a fantastic job, |
| 1:07.5 | kind of putting into perspective, first what Grayscale is, and then also its role in relationship to Bitcoin and Ethereum. |
| 1:15.5 | I think part of this, David, was like, I don't think people totally understand what GBTC is and what ETH are. |
| 1:23.5 | I got a text from a friend of mine who's actually an investor and he's like, hey, I own some ETH and Bitcoin on Coinbase, |
| 1:30.5 | but I noticed this GBTC and this ETH in my Schwab account, what the heck are they? |
| 1:37.5 | And so these are of course, Grayscale products that you can buy inside of a brokerage. |
| 1:42.5 | And I think we spent a lot of time in the first part of this actually talking about what those products are. |
| 1:48.5 | Are they real crypto? Do they represent crypto? |
| 1:51.5 | Who has the private keys? Who secures them? |
| 1:54.5 | How are they priced compared to buying it on spot? |
| 1:57.5 | So I think this will be pretty handy for you if you're a retail investor and you're like, hey, I want some exposure into these assets. |
| 2:05.5 | Should I buy them on Coinbase or some spot market or should I buy them inside my brokerage? |
| 2:12.5 | These Grayscale assets buy them that way. |
... |
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