Institutional FOMO: How whales are hogging the Bitcoin supply
Grayscale knows no stopping now. The largest crypto fund on earth now holds three percent of all Bitcoin. With this, it is calling on competitors who don’t want to leave the field without a fight.
The Bitcoin hoover is sucking again. Grayscale, also known as probably the biggest crypto whale in the universe, is using the temporary price correction for a shopping spree. As the GBTC Tracker reported on Twitter (and Grayscale then officially confirmed), the fund has bought an impressive 16,244 BTC. Grayscale now holds 616,558 BTC, or 3 percent of all available coins, Bitcoin Pro according to Bitcointreasuries.org – also reported by BTC-ECHO. With the latest purchase alone, Grayscale has lightened the market by as many BTC as can be mined in 18 days.
Barry Silbert, the architect of the fund’s aggressive purchasing policy, then commented on the purchase with a clear GIF.
pic.twitter.com/4LJsRN9yr1
– Barry Silbert (@BarrySilbert) January 18, 2021
With a fund volume of 19 billion US dollars in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, the asset manager is slowly but surely moving up into the premier league of financial management. Naturally, this brings competition on the scene.
The most prominent example this week was the news about the asset manager BlackRock, which could soon enter the Bitcoin futures business. The world’s largest asset manager reserves the right to include bitcoin derivatives in two of its funds (“BlackRock Global Allocation Fund” and “BlackRock Funds V”). Here’s what our friend Silbert has to say about it:
Hey Blackrock pic.twitter.com/u3vOGOHnJj
– Barry Silbert (@BarrySilbert) January 21, 2021
Yet BlackRock indulged in quite different prophecies of doom in 2018, as the Twitter account “@DocumentBitcoin” smugly notes.
#Bitcoin comes at you fast. pic.twitter.com/PZyfFWnGnm
– Documenting Bitcoin 📄 (@DocumentBitcoin) January 20, 2021
In addition, news reached us on Friday afternoon, 22 January, that MicroStrategy had acquired a further 314 BTC. The company now holds a total of 70,784 BTC.
MicroStrategy has purchased approximately 314 bitcoins for $10.0 million in cash in accordance with its Treasury Reserve Policy, at an average price of approximately $31,808 per bitcoin. We now hold approximately 70,784 bitcoins.https://t.co/zMJSH29bmC
– Michael Saylor (@michael_saylor) January 22, 2021
Craig Wright and the Bitcoin White Paper
And then there was the “Faketoshi” case. On 20 January, the self-proclaimed Bitcoin founder Craig had wanted to assert his alleged copyright on the Bitcoin white paper via his legal team. His team demanded the immediate deletion of the original paper from the bitcoin.org and bitcoincore.org websites.
Although the paper trades under an MIT licence and should thus be accessible to all, unknown Bitcoin Core developers temporarily took the paper off the website.