Crypto investment fund Grayscale has revealed it received record-breaking inflows of money during the first six months of 2018 even though the price of Bitcoin crashed from $20,000 to $7,000.
Crypto Fund Receives Strong Backing
Grayscale Investments released their first Digital Asset Investment report, which showed a large influx of money into their crypto investment funds. From January to June, they amassed $248.4 million in new assets, which will add to their $2 billion portfolio. This is the highest amount of money they have received in any six-month period.
“As the investment community knows, over the last six months, the digital asset market experienced one of the largest price drawdowns since the inception of Bitcoin in 2009,” said Grayscale in the report. “However, what is more interesting, and somewhat counterintuitive, is that the pace of investment into Grayscale products has accelerated to a level that we have not seen before.”
During this time, they added new funds including support for Bitcoin Cash, Ether, Litecoin, and Ripple in March. They now have eight investment funds available including a Digital Large Cap Fund.
Grayscale Investments is a subsidiary of Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group, founded in 2013. The Group manages Genesis Trading which is a full-service, institutional trading firm aimed at digital currencies. It also manages a crypto news site, which provides market updates.
“Bitcoin has the potential to radically transform our concepts of money, store of value, and the means by which assets are exchanged the world over,” said B
In June, Grayscale launched their Zencash Investment Trust focused on the Zencash (ZEN). Similar to Zcash, which Grayscale already offers, it is available to accredited investors for the first year and then will be available to the general public.
Strong Demand from Institutional Investors
More than half of the investment came from institutional investors, according to the report. This shows a clear sign of the interest in the market and sharply contrasts Blackrock CEO Larry Fink who said that he hadn’t heard of one client who was interested in cryptocurrencies.
Fink said: “No. I don’t think that any client has sought out crypto exposure… I’ve not heard from one client who says, ‘I need to be in this.'”
Other signs of a move towards institutional investors include the largest ETF trader in Europe moving into crypto alongside a new proposal for a Bitcoin ETF in the U.S., which has attracted a large number of comments by those in the crypto community. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has also clarified its position on securities and said that Ethereum and Bitcoin are not securities, even though Ethereum was funded by an ICO.
On the back of this, Coinbase has continued to move into the smart money market with its custody offering although it had to backtrack after previously claiming that the SEC had approved it to list security tokens.
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