The Grayscale Bitcoin Investment Trust is now open again to Investors

After being closed for several weeks, the Grayscale Bitcoin Investment Trust is now back open to investors.

In fact, most of their funds are now open again:

(Source: https://grayscale.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Grayscale-One-Pager-January-2021-Closed.pdf)

The Ethereum fund is still closed currently and the XRP fund is likely closed indefinitely.

While the bitcoin trust was closed to new investors, it still allowed for in-kind exchanges where investors could swap their bitcoin for shares in the bitcoin trust which trade under the ticker symbol GBTC.

While this being back open may not sound like that big of a deal, it probably is.

Grayscale now holds more than $24 billion assets under management, which makes them one of the largest bitcoin investment managers in the world.

When bitcoin goes into this fund, it doesn't come out...

Even when people swap their bitcoin for shares of GBTC, that bitcoin doesn't come back out.

So, the fund growing in size may not represent new buying of bitcoin, it represents bitcoin being removed from circulation.

If you are curious why the supply on exchanges keeps going down, you can thank Grayscale and their GBTC fund.

The fact that the shares trade at a premium encourages funds to buy bitcoin on exchanges, ship em over to Grayscale and swap em for shares of GBTC.

They can participate in the gains of bitcoin as well as collect the premium in the shares of GBTC.

In fact, it's entirely possible that as long as this premium lasts it will work t push the price of bitcoin higher and higher as more and more money will try to take advantage of this arbitrage opportunity.

Some love to stick to the mantra of not your keys not your crypto, but what I love about GBTC is the fact that I can own it in my retirement account, and that is meaningful because most people have a lot more money in retirement accounts than they do in checking accounts.

Perhaps promoting that aspect to the masses would be the best way to get them in and send the price of bitcoin skyrocketing! :)

Stay informed my friends.

-Doc