Grayscale Launches Five New Digital Asset Trusts, Said Investors Want Diversification

Grayscale Investments, the largest digital asset manager, launched five new digital currency trusts, the company announced Wednesday. 

In contrast to some of Grayscale’s other products, the new trusts will invest in a range of alternative cryptocurrencies, including tokens from oracle provider Chainlink and the media advertising- focused Basic Attention Token. 

“Even 18 months to 24 months ago, 100% of investors’ only or first investment in the space would have been around Bitcoin,” said Michael Sonnenshein, CEO of Grayscale. “We’ve seen that change dramatically, because I think there is a shared appreciation and understanding amongst investors that it is, in fact, an asset class, and as a result of that, going to include assets beyond Bitcoin.” 

The five new trusts are the Grayscale Basic Attention Token Trust, Chainlink Trust, Decentraland Trust, Filecoin Trust and the Livepeer Trust. Each is now open daily subscription by “eligible individual and institutional accredited investors,” according to the release. 

While the new trusts focus on investments that have not yet made their way into the mainstream, Sonnenshein said that Grayscale has always been ahead of the curve. 

“We have long believed in the prediction that digital currency as an asset class would be an area investors would want exposure to,” Sonnenshein told Blockworks. “We really do a deep dive into these tokens, and the launch of these additional five products is just kind the beginning of the continued expansion of the product family.” 

Grayscale now offers 14 total investment products, including the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (ticker GBTC), which launched in 2013. GBTC allows investors to gain exposure to bitcoin without actually holding the asset, alleviating concerns over security and custody, but that can sometimes come with a premium. 

“Digital currencies have, and largely still today, exist outside of the typical places where investors are making capital allocation decisions, like investing in stocks, and bonds, and ETFs, and mutual funds and things like that,” said Sonnenshein. “So Grayscale really has developed into a family of what we would call access products, and we’re still expanding that family of access products.