Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) Adds 3500 Bitcoin In Last 24-Hours, Outgrows ARK Investment In Size

The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) has quietly accumulated another ~3500 Bitcoins over the last 24 hours pouring $166 million investment. With this, GBTC’s total Bitcoin holdings stand at 653.83K BTC coins with net assets under management (AUM) of over $34 billion.

Over the last month, GBTC has increased its holdings by adding nearly 50K Bitcoins in aggressive purchases driven by strong institutional inflows. The recent interest in Bitcoin shown by American corporates has kept institutional inflows ticking in.

Interestingly, with $34 billion in net assets under management (AUM), the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) has outgrown asset management company ARK Investment in size. Eric Balchunas, the senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence writes:

“Wow $GBTC now at $34b mkt cap (bigger than $ARKK now). If it were an ETF it would be about the 30th biggest (out of 2500). If a real bitcoin ETF is ever approved in the US it/they could have $50b in first year”.

This is just the single product and the biggest from digital asset manager Grayscale. It’s second biggest Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) has also shot to $5.6 in net AUM as Grayscale purchased nearly 200,000 ETH coins in the last seven days.

As per the latest on-chain metrics, Bitcoin (BTC) is all set to rally 135% from current price points and move past $100K levels. If this turns true, GBTC will easily surpass $75 in AUM.  

ARK Investment Increased Holdings of GBTC by 2.14 Million Shares

As we know, asset management companies, accredited investors and other financial institutions usually gain exposure to Bitcoins by buying the shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) in the open market.

In the recent filing with the U.S. SEC, ARK Investments have mentioned that the company added an additional 2.14 million GBTC shares (OTCMKTS: GBTC) during Q4 2020 taking its total holdings to 7.31 million shares.

Cathie Woods, ARK Investments CEO and early Bitcoin investors disclosed this in the SEC filing. Q4 2020 was the time when institutional interest in BTC was at the top and huge money was flowing into the market.

Since the start of Q4 2020, the GBTC share price has literally surged 300%. The year-to-date returns are also over 50%. As of Friday closing, GBTC shares were trading at the price of 48.91 per stock.