Topic: Everything you wanted to know about Grayscale BTC Trust but were afraid to ask! - page 3. (Read 16372 times)

If my back-of-the-envelope computations are correct, this sale was all their GBTC stash, and none is left.

They still own a tiny amount of ETHE, but as far as Bitcoin is concerned, they shouldn't be done.
Do you know any resource I can check to prove my stretchy math?

best case, as much as DCG has locked in relation to coins tainted by other projects linked to legal issues.. im not talking about all coin
just the allotment assigned on the books as DCG being sponsors of as a separate entity

Wondering how much more outflows GBTC will get.
My spider sense gets that we are maybe halfway from the total exit. So, after a little more than another week of suffering, the "9" will finally prevail.
Or is it just wishful thinking and GBTC will deplete all its stash?

update(as of 22nd jan)
GBTC holdings 552,681btc
blackrock holdings 39,925btc

so the FTX issues arrises again this week. or finally clawbacks some hidden funds

https://www.reuters.com/technology/ftx-sold-about-1-bln-grayscales-bitcoin-etf-since-its-approval-coindesk-2024-01-22/

ftx had over $1b hidden away in GBTC shares

FTX customers will be a bit happier. as thats another $1b added to the pot scammed customers can get back from the FTX fiasco

it was about 20,000 coins redeemed/sold between ETF launch to monday(before this post)

It would also not be very shocking if Barry knew in advance that they would be dumping bitcoin when GBTC was approved to be converted into an ETF. This is head shaking, however, he might also have shorted bitcoin on January 11 after the SEC's announcement very much similar to how he shorted dogecoin when Elon appeared in Saturday Night Live hehehehe.

@odolvlobo. I disagree. This thread has much knowledge and information and this should continue.

@franky1. Agreed. Also if this thread is locked, I am quite certain someone else would create another GBTC, Barry thread.

GBTC is still unique compared to other ETF. and also has side-drama of the DCG stuff which can still impact it.
i wouldnt suggest locking it. but let it go idle if there is nothing to talk about and people can easily search it and bump it when new pops up

GBTC is pretty unique so far.

• It is the only ETF trading at a discount to NAV, while the others are actually mainly trading at a premium.
• It is by far the most lightly priced of the bunch in terms of bid/ask spread
• It is by far the most liquid of the bung, with volumes racking up to 50% of daily turnover

There is a point in entering Grayscale, even if its fees are astonishingly high when compared to the others.

GBTC still seems unique to me, including that there is going to be an ongoing dynamic in which several of the GBTC incumbent clients are going to gravitate towards other ETFs or ETPs  or whatever they might be called...and there could be some questions about whether they ever get new clients and/or new money or if maybe the ONLY money remaining in GBTC might be those clients who do not have tax-beneficial accounts.

Sure these kinds of discussions could take place on some other thread, but I don't see any real issue or confusion in terms of keeping this thread going, especially there are several of us who are active here and also the topic of GBTC relation and/or difference from other offerings is likely way more interesting than what you are making it out to be.  There probably has never been any kind of situation like this in the history of finances, in which part of the reason that the trade volume is breaking so many records has to do with the preexistence of this GBTC product and how there is likely even some politics and conspiracy theories involved in how GBTC has been or is being treated, including ongoing civil and potential criminal law suits that might end up drying up into nothingness - but even Barry Silbert's resignation is not exactly a resolved issue in terms of his likely still being involved in Grayscale and in other matters, and at some point there were theories of his deserving criminal prosecution, which I doubt that those questions and/or particularities have been resolved either..

So congrats to fillippone for creating a seemingly somewhat evergreen topic in which everything that any of us would want to know but were afraid to ask about Grayscale BTC has not even come close to drying up. 

TLDR: Long live this thread... until it doesn't.   

I suggest that we retire this thread. There is no longer anything unique about GBTC, now that it is an ETP and there are a dozen others just like it.

imagine this
during 2013-2019 you bought housing property at say <$5k /sqr metre
2019-23 value is $10k-$30k/square metre
2024 value is ~$43k/square metre

so you were happy to sell(money upfront) timeshares in your property, for even 50% of 2019-2023 prices as its still profit compared to the <$5/mtr you paid pre 2019
you then syphon off the fiat from time shares into your sister companies.. but you are still at the end of 2023 owner of the deeds to the house and unable to sell the property for legal reasons upto end of 2023

if you ever got in legal trouble the courts take the house leaving the timeshare holders out of pocket with nothing

so now2024 you can let the time share holders redeem shares for house. so you sell the house deed for cash via a property developer/escrow(coinbase premium) and the investors get cash.. and same day investors use cash to buy the house deed but temporarily put it into another property managers scheme (blackrock)

you dont want other managers partnering with you offering their shares in your property manager business as its competition. you want time share people redeeming your shares, to take the properties(deeds) off you

once you offloaded your property. you then set your property management fee to be super low
and then the home owners come back to you. not selling the house back to you. but asking you to be their property manager where you get a commission per time share sold by them

so now you still get recurring income from the property. but the property is no longer in your name. thus the court cant grab it

It sure as well could be the case that Grayscale has already calculated that no matter what possible financially viable course of action that they take, they are likely going to bleed a lot of their assets under management, but it likely does not mean that they would like to bleed those assets under management, but they may well have been putting themselves into a worse position if they had engaged more in the race to the bottom of fees race. 

I would still expect that Grayscale may well be trying to calculate the maximum fees that they believe that they are able to receive to help to sustain them as long as they can, even if they continue to have ongoing legal battles.

grayscale(dcg) accumulated coin over the decade and THEY locked it to coinbase
their customers bought private shares but the coins were still 'sponsored' by dcg/grayscale

they are now allowed for the share holders to get enough shares to form a basket for the share holder to request their share allotment to unlock grayscale coin

Coins held by Grayscale are not in Grayscale availability; those are the client's funds and cannot be transferred to DCG as part of the settlement process.
Maybe Grayscale could sell his entire business to fidelity to pay off his debt, but this is a completely different scenario.

what if i told you maybe (DCG)grayscale wants to bleed. after all DCG have some legal issues with gemini and other companies and dont want to be holding a bag of coin they have to hand back to gemini/others. which would then cause de-pegging.
they want to move the coins out of "their sponsorship" and then eventually lower the fee to then have others as agents managing a basket thus no coin associated with DCG to be bitten off in lawsuits.
but instead having agents basket managing coin where Grayscale live off the trade fee's

if DCG is showing as having $XXbillion assets locked in GBTC. it's ripe for picking
if DCG can offload its assets there is nothing to pick. it can also sell its other portfolios to other sister companies. so if/when gemini pull the trigger, DCG can just liquidate with a bankruptcy, only have to pay pennies on the dollar. and then ride the gravy train of income from share fee's, custodial fees via its separate entities

I have a hard time believing that Grayscale would not have done calculations in regards to how fast that they could expect various GBTC accounts to bleed away, and I would think that Grayscale would have had known the quantity of GBTC shares that are held through tax sheltered accounts versus being held in non-tax privileged accounts.  So presumptively it would be much easier to move value in the tax sheltered/tax privileged accounts as compared to the ones that aren't, and so in that regard, Grayscale might have estimated that ONLY so many of the account holders are going to be ready and willing to transfer value away from their account, and sure it is also possible that Grayscale has miscalculated these kinds of matters, but I would think that they have pretty good ideas about their account holders and through what kinds of vehicles that their GBTC shares are being held.  It would be nice to see some statistics regarding those kinds of matters, if they are available.

nope, thats not how it works
if GBTC has 566,973 btc at spot price 41,512.62
and a share is 0.00089397 with 634,220,100 shares = 566,973.742797
then it all tallies

all they need to do is know the share price is 37.111 for 100% peg
so they should be marketing shares at 37.11 instead of 37.01

so all they need to do is just have bids and asks of 37.11

update(at time of post) GBTC holdings 566,973btc
edit:
update(time of post +14 hours) blackrock holdings 33,430.57btc

However, Barry will not sell all of these coins hehehe. According to this article GBTC is beginning to track bitcoin's price since the conversion into an ETF and selling or buying is a requirement.

https://protos.com/grayscale-bought-bitcoin-for-a-decade-then-became-its-1-seller-overnight/

This might imply that GBTC discount or premium to NAV should always be close to 0%. If GBTC is on a premium, this requires Grayscale to buy bitcoin and bring it back to 0%.

Discount or premium to NAV is presently on -0.47%.

ETF inflows from first week remain positive, but does indeed provide some important context when GBTC are selling off coins.


I anticipate a lot more to be sold off, so far it's around 6% of total holdings as of today. This therefore could indicate ~17 weeks of selling if the pace continues, but only time will tell.

Given Greyscale is owned by DGC, it's in their best interest to not crash or spook the market (based on their overall holdings), so I'd like to think they will continue conservative selling, ideally OTC directly to the new ETFs who are needing to acquire BTC based on inflows (potentially at a slight discount as well). This would be the most sensible way to deal with offloading such a large number of coins, as always. I'd like to see this as a "win win" situation: GBTC need to unload and new ETFs need to acquire coins, but it's too early to speculate whether this is how it will play out, and whether demand will meet the current supply being redistributed.

The concern is that GBTC could pull the plug at any point, which would naturally crash the market based on selling pressure. I think the reality is that for now this remains unlikely.