Abstract
Cryptocurrency trust funds have been an arena for capital and have attracted a lot of attention due to the booming
Bitcoin market. The premium of the Grayscale
Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC) created attractive arbitrage opportunities for investors which helped it lead the way in the market. As an investment product under the supervision of compliance, GBTC was far more investable than many other traditional financial products in 2020. A growing number of institutions have already flocked into the market. Some institutions began to buy or hold trust fund products, while banks, as a representative of traditional finance, were also taking part in independent node verification networks and custody services.
Key points
· The Premium caused by the design concept of GBTC is key to the product and is also a crucial point that attracts investors. Revising the design to reduce the premium will not necessarily optimize GBTC;
· Other cryptocurrency trust fund products under Grayscale and other companies are not strong enough to threaten the
status of GBTC as a leader in the industry;
· Cryptocurrency trust funds in 2020 were more likely to be funded than conservative underlying investments such as gold and treasury bonds. Compared with other high-yield financial products, the cryptocurrency trust funds, as new products, do have an obvious advantage in terms of yield;
· Venture capital institutions and traditional investment institutions have set their eye on cryptocurrency trust funds one after another. Financial institutions are also gradually preparing for more trust fund products, and banks have begun to serve as custodians and participate in stable currency nodes;
· The cryptocurrency trust fund is more likely to expand towards multiple forms in the future and maybe a valuable tool to hedge against inflation. It is thought that it might reach its peak in the next two years. The trust fund, as a compliant investment channel for cryptocurrency, will certainly be widely recognized. It can achieve diversified and differentiated targets, mechanisms, and functions.
1. “Being affected”, Cryptocurrency custodial market becomes an arena for capital
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued an interpretative letter in July 2020 clarifying that national banks had a right to provide legal bank accounts and custody services for cryptocurrency. This marked the official connection between
Bitcoin and the banking business. Large financial institutions were allowed to open traditional bank accounts for cryptocurrency companies and offer private key custodial services for cryptocurrency.
A war for capital has long begun. One of the well-known participants is Anchorage, a cryptocurrency custodial service company. It raised $57 million in funding back as early as 2019, and obtained the first national crypto banking license in the United States in January. Metaco obtained $17 million in financing from banks such as Standard Chartered Bank and United Bank of Switzerland (UBS). Other companies such as Copper, BitCV, Coinbase, and Custody had also flocked into the market...
Custodial service is inseparable from the development of cryptocurrency asset management channels among which grayscale is the most well-known.
Source: Grayscale Quarterly Report
According to the above graph, the year 2020 witnessed explosive growth in terms of cryptocurrency asset management. It grew twenty-fold within 2 years from about $1 billion in the second half of 2018 to over $20 billion by the end of 2020. At present, even the average weekly investment exceeds $250 million. The scale of investment kept on expanding, representing an increasingly faster growth rate for crypto assets.
Source: GryptoGraph(with data as of 30 November 2020) Picture: provided by Gate.io Research Institute
As of November 2020, Grayscale had become the largest public holder of
Bitcoin in the world, with about four times more
Bitcoin than the second-largest holder, Block.one. Digital Currency Group (DCG), Grayscale's parent company, had holdings and investments in more than 30 countries around the world. Its crypto assets could be found on various exchanges, such as Coinbase, Coindesk, and Circle.
Source: GryptoGraph(with data as of 30 November 2020)
Source: Grayscale Quarterly Report
The average weekly investment for the
Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC) accounted for more than 70% of all its crypto assets. It grew simultaneously along with the expansion of Grayscale Asset Management. In other words, Grayscale’s GBTC investment played a key role. Cryptocurrency custody was not the main area that investors were competing for, GBTC was.
2. Reference to the status Quo of GBTC
2.1 GBTC
This report believes that there are two types of premiums: The price difference between the primary market and the secondary market (dominant premium) and the difference between the GBTC trust share and the value of the underlying BTC. (invisible premium). Moreover, the closed period and the lack of a redemption mechanism make both the flow of GBTC shares and the premium fluctuation irregular. This makes it a high-quality securities investment asset.
2.1.1 GBTC under U.S. Regulations
Article D of the US Securities Act allows issuers to raise funds without being registered with the US Securities Regulatory Commission (SEC). However, this is only to open private equity financing for qualified high-net-worth investors¹. GBTC is a kind of private equity trust fund, not an ETF. The SEC had rejected a number of listing applications for
Bitcoin ETF products because it believed that digital currencies lacked liquidity, transparency, and effective custody, and could lead to market manipulation.
Therefore, only eligible investors were able to create trust shares with a 6-month closed period, while ineligible traders could trade on the OTCQX market. This also was counted in the annual premium of GBTC.
2.1.2 GBTC Design Concept
GBTC was a passive investment similar to an ETF product, with eligible investors being able to create trust units. However, it had no redemption mechanism. Coupled with the OTC transactions by ineligible investors, a serious disparity between the prices of the primary market and the secondary market grew. This is the premium.
________________________
¹
*Accredited American Investor:
· With an annual income of over 200,000 U.S. dollars (or combined income with spouse reaching $300,000);
· Individually or jointly with a spouse that has a net worth of over US$1 million (excluding residential real estate);
· Hold an American financial professional certificate (Series7, Series65, or Series82);
· Owns liquid assets of over $5 million, or any entity in which all the equity owners are accredited investors.
Source: YCharts
YCharts data showed that GBTC had the highest premium of 258.1% and the lowest with -62.15% since its issuance in 2013. As of 2020, the overall level of premiums had both stabilized and fluctuated between 3.03% and 41.42% compared to previous years. When Grayscale began to design GBTC, it knew it would attract capital. The fluctuation of the premium showed this. The reasons that accounted for this could be divided into the following three points:
· Lack of competition. Especially before 2018, the premium had fluctuated over 100% several times, while the project parties were still issuing coins to raise funds. Grayscale had already started operating with its capital under regulatory compliance;
· The demand in the secondary market was greater than the demand in the primary market. When the supply of trust shares set up by eligible investors was lower than the demand for trust shares by OTC traders, the premium of the trust fund was inevitable;
· A new unit based on the net asset value set up by eligible investors must have a 6-month lock-up period (previously a one-year lock-up period). As a result, the real price lagged and the supply in the secondary market also lagged.
In addition, investors’ demand was also a major factor affecting trust prices:
· If investors had strong demand for BTC, GBTC would be at a premium;
· If investors had weak demand for BTC, GBTC would be discounted.
When there was a severe discount, and the trust required a rather-high 2% management fee, it was hard to tell whether the trust would sell the BTC it held to pay the management fee.
The GBTC design was more like an "experiment" launched to test the market and was also like a "driver" for investors to take advantage of the arbitrage opportunity that the premium made possible while also making the market more active. Therefore, after this experiment, it was inevitable that Grayscale would successively launch other digital asset trust funds to meet market demand. In the meantime, other global institutions had also entered this market after seeing the continuous growth of GBTC.
2.1.3 Current status of GBTC
Bitcoin's surge this year had carried the market for GBTC, or it could be argued that GBTC had promoted
Bitcoin to help it rise in value. In the bullish market, the competition had become increasingly fierce. Did the internal and external competition exert a greater impact on GBTC?
Source: QKL123,coingecko
On average, the fierce competition in the second half of this year did not have much impact on the dominant market share of GBTC. GBTC's holdings had been steadily going up, and showed explosive growth over the same period due to the sharp rise in prices at the end of the year. Moreover, with the continued growth, GBTC's holdings and
Bitcoin's market value increased during the same period. Consequently,
it was obvious that both internal and external factors exerted little influence on GBTC. The inflow of trust funds into the market was one of the factors that prompted Bitcoin’s price to surge.
Source: QKL123,coingecko,Investment.com
(Supply ratio = Bitcoin supply/GBTC trust share, price ratio= Bitcoin price/GBTC secondary market price)
As shown in the graph above, although the price ratio of
Bitcoin and GBTC fluctuated slightly, the overall ratio was stable. The supply ratio presented a remarkable increase. That was to say while maintaining price growth over the same period, the increase in
Bitcoin supply was greater than the number of GBTC trust shares set up, and the share ratio was less. However, the price increased over the same period. GBTC's trust shares were more valuable than
Bitcoin.
The current premium of GBTC over the underlying Bitcoin is also prominent.
According to YChart data, the GBTC premium fluctuated within the range of [5%, 45%] in a period of over half a year; However, within half a year, the
Bitcoin index price enjoyed an exponential bullish momentum and the GBTC premium fluctuated sharply. However, it had no obvious positive or negative correlation with the BTC market. This happened for two reasons; The 6-month closed period had brought GBTC investment under a certain hysteresis; On the other hand, the
Source: QKL123
no-redemption mechanism involved suppliers and demanders in a separate price battle, which enabled investors to transfer their demand for BTC investment, disrupting the real price of GBTC. Eric Balchunas, an ETF analyst from Bloomberg, judged that if the SEC allowed GBTC to be converted into an ETF product, Grayscale might go into liquidation. He believed it needed the SEC to continue to reject
Bitcoin ETFs. This report also believes that the design concept of GBTC makes it impossible to accurately predict the liquidity and the premium fluctuations of GBTC, and that market manipulation is lower than that of cryptocurrencies. This is the key to making it a high-quality securities asset.
2.2 Grayscale’s other cryptocurrency trust funds
Source: Grayscale.co (with data as of January 19, 2021;
Grayscale XRP Trust had begun liquidation on January 13, 2021)
There were seven single-asset trusts (with XRP trust in liquidation period) and one multi-asset portfolio fund available under Grayscale. Except for those that had not been on the secondary market, all other trust funds had presented a high premium and premium arbitrage value to varying degrees.
Source: Grayscale.co(with data as of January 19, 2021)
The five funds offered a premium to a certain extent since the time they were listed. Among them, BCHG and LTCN had maintained a super high premium (with BCHG 424.69% and LTCN 2138.98%), attracting investors to set up trust lines. The current premium of GBTC was around 12%, and the premiums of all other trusts had exceeded this numerical value. From these, Grayscale had witnessed the success of GBTC's exploration in the secondary market and had never tired of operating at the premium.
2.3 Alternatives to GBTC available in the market
Source: BitMEX Research,with data as of December 9, 2020
These exchange products are all mechanisms that make the GBTC non-redeemable. Available as a type of open product, they had low lag and showed no obvious time delay, and their transaction prices were closer to the net asset value (with low premium/discount). However, they did not seem to be popular among the majority of investors. Compared with GBTC's current market value of $23.3 billion, the above-mentioned funds failed to impact GBTC's leading position at present, and their scale could only be compared with other trusts under Grayscale. Among the BTC products with the same targets, there was no trend toward another product that could replace GBTC in the market.
3 Exploration of cryptocurrency trust funds
3.1 Why there is only one "Grayscale"
As early as 2013, Barry Silbert, DCG founder, persuaded the board of directors to put out funds to set up Grayscale Investment. In its initial stage, it only used private equity to offer accredited investors
Bitcoin investment opportunities. Until 2015, Grayscale GBTC was on the U.S. stock market (OTC Market) and opened the secondary market for investment, which meant that Grayscale had officially created a mainstream compliance channel for institutional investment in cryptocurrencies.
The previous paragraph did mention that some of the current
Bitcoin trust funds were unable to impact the leading position of GBTC and the continued maintenance of the premium rate also reflected that investors were more willing to accept trust fund shares than cryptocurrencies. So why was only Grayscale on the frontline of the market? How about other large financial institutions? What are their concerns? In Bitebi’s opinion, four main reasons could account for it:
· Regulatory uncertainty
· Tas uncertainty
· To avoid dealing with digital wallets
· To avoid the escrow of private keys
Whether it was the cryptocurrency market (pictured on the right) that had promoted the cryptocurrency trust funds, or the cryptocurrency trust fund that had promoted the cryptocurrency market, the market in the second half of 2020 had attracted a lot of investors to focus more on cryptocurrency trust funds as well as made them a preferred investment choice under regulatory compliance. In this way, what other investment advantages do cryptocurrency trust funds have in addition to regulatory compliance?
Source: BitMEX Research, with data as of December 9, 2020
3.2 Investability of cryptocurrency trust funds
Currently, there isn’t much data available for investors to study on cryptocurrency trust funds. And that is why, the only way to learn about cryptocurrency trust funds is to look at the GBTC as a reference for trust funds to compare with traditional financial assets such as gold, futures, bonds, and stocks. According to the data, the source of funds for cryptocurrency trust funds in 2020 was more likely to be from conservative investment targets such as gold and treasury bonds. Although it showed high risk and high volatility in the market, it had great advantages as a new product compared with high-yield products.
3.2.1 GBTC vs Gold
Source: Yahoo Finance (withGOLD price being the real-time closing price
of Barrick Gold Corporation on Nasdaq), with data as of January 21, 2021
Compared with the price of gold, there was no intuitive connection between GBTC and gold before 2020. When GBTC’s price began to surge at the end of 2020, the price of gold fell along with the surge. In 2018, Irene Henriques and Perry Sadorsky used the centralized multivariate GARCH model--dynamic conditional correlation (DCC), asymmetric DCC (ADCC), and generalized orthogonal GARCH (GO-GARCH) to estimate the minimum variance value of the equity portfolio to study the value of the portfolio with
Bitcoin replacing gold. The study confirmed the possibility of investors obtaining higher risk-adjusted returns after using
Bitcoin instead of gold in the investment portfolios. As far as it goes, it was very likely that the assets flowing out of gold at the end of 2020 were put into the cryptocurrency market. And it was highly likely that investors had put
Bitcoin or
Bitcoin trust funds in many investment portfolios as a tool to store value or hedge against inflation.
3.2.2 GBTC vs BTC Futures
According to the data from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the price fluctuations of
Bitcoin trust funds and
Bitcoin futures converged (there was also no differentiation between the two and the rise in
Bitcoin prices). Therefore, both of them were the application of traditional financial products in cryptocurrency as well as the supplement to the investment product of
Bitcoin from the perspective of their "commodity" attribute, with no substitution relationship between them.
Source: Yahoo Finance,Chicago Mercantile Exchange (with data as of January 21, 2021)
3.2.3 GBTC vs Bonds
Source: federalreserve.gov,Yahoo Finance(with data as of January 21, 2021)
It seemed that the GBTC market was negatively correlated with the U.S. Treasury bonds to a certain extent. And it was also since 2018 that GBTC had presented a positive correlation with the bond index of Pacific Investment Management Corporation to some extent. Generally speaking, the market of
Bitcoin trust funds was closer to that of high-volatility assets compared with bonds, and its source of funds came more likely from low-risk assets.
3.2.4 GBTC's performance in stock indexes
Source: investment.com(with data as of January 21, 2021)
Since GBTC went on the secondary market in 2015, it presented high volatility which was undoubtedly the first factor to attract investors. In 2020, its growth far exceeded the three major stock indexes. Whether it was because of the cryptocurrency itself or the role of trust funds that played in the market, cryptocurrency funds had undoubtedly become an excellent investment product that was accepted by the majority of investors.
3.3 Recent developments of some relevant institutions
3.3.1 Investment institutions had entered the market
Source: Fintel(with data as of November 9, 2020) Picture: Gate.io research institute
As of November 9, 2020, a total of 23 institutional investors had disclosed their positions (except for the institutions mentioned in the above table, other institutions held positions below 10,000, and as of January 12, 2021, a total of 38 institutions held trust shares.), of which BlockFi, Three Arrows Capital Pte, ARK, and Horizon Kinetics already held over $100 million in assets in GBTC. Rothschild Investment Gorp, a family investment company with a century-old history, was also in this list. All these indicated that the emergency of cryptocurrency trust funds enabled traditional finance to embrace cryptocurrency investment more willingly.
Besides regulatory compliance and investability, other attributes of GBTC that may be recognized by institutions will be explained in detail in the fourth part of this report.
3.3.2 Large-scale financial institutions began to set foot on this market
After witnessing the great success of GBTC, many financial institutions also began to design their own trust products or join the cryptocurrency market.
First of all, lots of companies led by Osprey Funds, Wilshire Phoenix FundsLLC and IDEG had implemented their cryptocurrency trust fund development plans. The three launched their
Bitcoin trusts in January 2021, June 2020, and November 2019, respectively. The most representative plans of the three companies should be that the first two had reduced their trust management charges to 0.49% and 0.9% respectively, with GBTC management charge being 2%, and the latter adopted active revenue-enhancing strategies which were specifically low-risk arbitrage and hedging to control drawdowns strategies, with GBTC adopting a passive management strategy mentioned as the one similar to ETF in 2.1). The five GBTC alternatives mentioned in 2.3 above were set up after different explorations in the redemption mechanism. The design of cryptocurrency trust funds is becoming more diversified.
Secondly, it was mentioned in the first part that the OCC had promoted large financial institutions to embrace cryptocurrency. That was why DBS Bank Limited, Standard Chartered and BBVA Bank had already made plans in the cryptocurrency market. According to Golden Financial News, Singapore's DBS Bank might get its crypto trading and custody platform ready in 2021, with SGX holding10% of the shares; Standard Chartered would cooperate with Northern Trust to launch an institutional-level custody platform-Zodia in 2021; BBVA Bank of Spain intended to apply METACO custody technology into the development of encryption business from Switzerland. The access of these major banks to the cryptocurrency custody market mentioned in the first part would be an important step towards bringing more cryptocurrency trust funds under compliance supervision.
Finally, JPMorgan Chase, the largest financial services institution in the United States that did not originally support cryptocurrencies, also officially announced in 2019 that it would launch the cryptocurrency JPM Coin. The OCC sent a letter to support banks to serve as stable currency nodes, which gave JP Morgan a firm foothold in the market. JPM Coin was also more like a stable currency in concept, anchored at a ratio of 1:1 with the U.S. dollar. It was applied in banking to replace traditional wire transfers with smart contracts. In addition to carrying out the custody service, the better way for traditional finance to gain access to the cryptocurrency market was to follow JPMorgan Chase to serve as a cryptocurrency node under regulatory compliance.
4. The future evolution of cryptocurrency trust funds
In the light of the current custodial service of cryptocurrency trust funds, the current
status of trust funds, and the exploration and development of various products led by GBTC in the industry, this report believes that the development of cryptocurrency trust funds could be divided into short-term and long-term ones.
4.1 Short-term
4.1.1 Form
Cryptocurrency trust funds are more likely to develop towards diversified targets.
Source: Grayscale.co
Compared with the highest premium of
Bitcoin trust funds of around 100%, Ethereum,
Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum (Classic), and
Litecoin all had a premium of more than 100%, especially with
Litecoin’s trust fund at a premium being close to 6000% when it was at its highest. As listed in 2.3 and 3.3.2, most trust funds set up in the market currently are innovated based on the Grayscale products’ mechanism. Moreover, the premium of the secondary market, which was several dozen times higher than that of the primary market, was high enough to attract the attention of capital.
In addition to targets such as Ethereum and
Litecoin, the booming of decentralized projects and the bull market in 2020 had also created many high-quality targets, such as Polkadot, Uniswap and
Loopring. Meanwhile, the OCC also supported banks in serving as trust fund custodians, which could more easily bring project funds based on various high-quality targets under compliance supervision.
4.1.2 Value
In traditional finance, low-risk and low-volatility assets were believed to be tools for currency to hedge risks. However, as the data in 3.2.2 and 3.2.3 show, while institutions endorsed
Bitcoin in 2020, assets were flowing out of low-volatility products. Perhaps institutions had already utilized the cryptocurrency trust fund as a tool hedging against inflation.
Source: FRED
FRED data shows that the trillion-level economic stimulus plans introduced by various countries in 2020 caused a sharp increase in the currency stock, but the loose quantitative policies and the growth of the M2 currency stock leads to rampant inflation and inequality. The only way it does not directly lead to food inflation is if the newly printed money stays in financial markets for speculation.
The rapid spread of COVID across the globe at the beginning of 2020 caused a sharp deflation in March 2020 (as shown in the above graphs), followed by the global central bank printing money and introducing quantitative easing policies, for example, the United States proposed $2 trillion stimulus bill at the end of March 2020, and Biden signed $1.9 trillion stimulus bill at the end of January 2021. Therefore, the current situation is that the inflation rate has risen dramatically to 6%, which is unsustainable for bond holders. Moreover, the economic impact caused by the COVID still existed, and the trillion-dollar economic stimulus plan is still on the way.
Source: coingecko,Bitcoin-A Novel Economic Institution
As shown in the figures above, firstly, cryptocurrencies such as
Bitcoin had a predictable supply schedule; secondly, the supply issuance was transparent and auditable.
Bitcoin’s hard supply cap was set at 21 million, and the output was halved every four years (Coinmetrics data shows) until it reached the upper limit; any institution or individual could run a
Bitcoin node and independently verify the past circulation of
Bitcoin, that’s, the distributed ledger technology (DLT). However, the regulatory system of
Bitcoin remained to be improved, which, as a result, discouraged many institutions. Therefore, cryptocurrency trust funds were a potential tool to hedge against inflation when they were under compliance supervision and in the custody of a third party.
As inflation intensified in the second half of 2020, funds had flowed out of stable assets such as gold and treasury bonds. It seemed that some ideological barriers were being broken down, with high-risk and high-volatility assets becoming hedges against inflation. The cryptocurrency trust fund might reach its heyday in the next two years when the spread of COVID was still not well controlled in early 2021.
4.2 Long-term
In the long run, although the attitudes of various countries towards cryptocurrencies were severely divided, central banks and banks of various countries have been actively preparing for the research related to the blockchain. The OCC had allowed banks to serve as nodes for stablecoins (such as JMP Coin, the stablecoin of JPMorgan Chase mentioned in 3.3.2), but did not allow them to run certain high-risk assets to disrupt the market. Therefore, it is more likely that large financial institutions will become nodes of cryptocurrencies in the future, thus strengthening their attributes which will make them "legal commodities".
As a channel for investing in cryptocurrencies, trust funds are bound to be more widely recognized. In the future, they will enjoy more diversified or differentiated targets, mechanisms, and functions. The cryptocurrency trust fund itself is legal security and would be independent of the blockchain sector and form its own sector in the market in the future.
5. Conclusion
The popularity of cryptocurrency trust funds in the market has begun to drive the cryptocurrency custody industry and has received widespread attention. In the light of the current
status of cryptocurrency trust funds, this report believes that the premium of the differentiation between the secondary and the primary markets caused by the GBTC design concept is the key to operating the product; Other funds with cryptocurrencies as targets under Grayscale and a series of GBTC substitutes emerged in the market are not strong enough to impact GBTC's leading position in the industry.
Grayscale occupied the high ground in the market, taking the lead in exploring compliance issues, dealing with wallets and private keys. The overall survey of the comparison between GBTC and traditional financial products showed that funds obviously flowed out from low-risk assets such as gold and treasury bonds, and GBTC,
Bitcoin futures, bond funds, and the three major U.S. stock indexes enjoyed a bull market over the same period when the market price rose sharply at the end of 2020. And participants included not only venture capital institutions but also traditional financial investment institutions. This report also finds that a growing number of financial institutions are beginning to design cryptocurrency trust fund products. Banks, the representatives of traditional finance, are mainly making preparations for serving cryptocurrency custody services and becoming stablecoin nodes.
In conclusion, the cryptocurrency trust funds will certainly evolve towards diversified forms, and towards being used to hedge against inflation. Under uncertain regulatory policies, it is more likely that traditional financial institutions such as banks will become cryptocurrency nodes, and cryptocurrencies will be more accepted by traditional finance. Besides, trust funds as their compliance investment channel will surely be more widely recognized and will achieve more diversified or differentiated targets, mechanisms, and functions.
However, there are several limitations in this report: First, some of the discussions are based on data only collected from one to two years or less than one year, because the cryptocurrency industry itself is an emerging industry, and trust funds have a shorter existence as its derivatives; Second, the conclusions drawn based on the data of the same period may be inaccurate because product-related comparisons are always faced with a huge information asymmetry in the capital investment industry as well as various complicated factors affecting the market; Third, the conclusions drawn by this report based on existing information and data analysis are likely to be very different from the potential future facts due to regulatory changes which is the biggest obstacle to the future development of trust funds.
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