It’s been a good week for bitcoin. We started the week off at around $7,900, and today it’s trading around $8,800.
On the institutional front, major bitcoin and cryptocurrency asset manager Grayscale Investments – maker of the publicly traded Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (OTC: GBTC) – came out with a big announcement this week. In 2019 it saw record inflows of $600 million.
Institutional investors (big financial firms) accounted for 71% of the money flowing into Grayscale products. Here’s an excerpt from the press release about its digital currency investments (emphasis mine):
During the fourth quarter of 2019, Grayscale raised $225.5 million into its investment products, bringing assets raised for the full-year to $607.7 million.
2019 marks Grayscale’s strongest annual asset raise and surpasses cumulative investment across the Grayscale family of products dating back to the firm’s inception in September 2013. Total investment since inception now exceeds $1 billion.
Grayscale Bitcoin Trust continued to lead 2019’s investment demand with $471.7 million total, $193.8 million of which were raised in 4Q2019, marking the largest quarterly investment into the Trust since its inception.
The majority of investments continued to come from institutional investors, accounting for 71% of investment for 2019.
Grayscale is one of the leading institutional on-ramps into the crypto market, so this is a very good sign. You can read the entire press release here.
Halving Watch
As you all know, the bitcoin halving is coming up in May. The good news is that word is finally starting to spread. Just in the past few days, I’ve read great articles about the importance of this halving from Bloomberg, Bitcoin Magazine, CNBC and FXStreet.
Half as much bitcoin coming on the market should be a strong catalyst indeed.
Fortunately, it’s not the only good news for bitcoin. We have some very exciting technological developments that could be going live in 2020, including Schnorr signatures, CTV and Taproot. These enhancements could allow for more transactions per second, enhanced privacy and better security. A solid write-up in Bitcoin Magazine last week explains the potential upgrades.