Grayscale's Sonnenshein Addresses GBTC's Collapsing Premium

Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein said the crypto asset management company is taking a wait-and-see approach to filing for a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).

• On CoinDesk TV Tuesday morning, the CEO, who took over Grayscale – owned by CoinDesk parent Digital Currency Group – in January, suggested U.S. regulators still aren’t ready to approve a bitcoin ETF, even though Grayscale is preparing for such an eventuality.
• A bitcoin ETF would likely oust Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) product from its dominant position by offering investors far lower fees and nixing the fund’s premium/discount discrepancies, negatives that have spooked some advisories from touching GBTC.
• Rebuffing assertions that an armada of recent bitcoin fund products could challenge GBTC with more competitive fee structures, Sonnenshein said the trust’s 2% annual fee would remain.
• He notched Grayscale’s collapsing premium to the forces of supply and demand. “There have been so many shares created that that has put some selling pressure on the stock itself, but ultimately [I] do not foresee this as a product issue.," he said.
• Institutional investors continue to line up, he said, predicting the market remains in the “early days” of a corporate bitcoin adoption trend that may accelerate through 2021.