The Ledger
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Sonnenshein: Grayscale relies on sister firm Genesis for all asset sourcing
“So our authorized participant and does all of our sourcing and trading for us is our sister firm called Genesis. They're a broker dealer based here in New York.”
Sonnenshein: Institutional allocators are rotating out of gold funds into Bitcoin
“Some investors are carving out some of their gold allocation and moving it into digital assets like Bitcoin. We don't find it the least bit coincidental that we saw some of the largest outflows on record from gold funds in Q four of last year when Bitcoin star…”
Sonnenshein: Bitcoin mining is predominantly powered by renewable energy sources
“Bitcoin mining and the fact that it's more often than not done with renewable energy sources, and that's another big misconception that's out there.”
Sonnenshein: Institutional career risk has flipped to FOMO for crypto allocators
“They have all capitulated from the career risk Of getting involved or being the guy in the investment committee that raises their hand and says, well, why don't we put 50 basis points into crypto or, you know, and capitulated to the career risk of not being th…”
Sonnenshein: Bitcoin is the worst mechanism for illicit activity
“Digital currencies like Bitcoin. Are, in fact, the worst, and again, I'll repeat, the worst mechanism for you to use if you would like to do anything the least bit untoward, nefarious, legal, you choose your own word. Every transaction in Bitcoin, the best way…”
Sonnenshein: Users will eventually pay a premium for financial privacy assets
“And I think a lot of folks don't yet fully appreciate that over time, they may in fact be paying a premium for that privacy, and we're living in a world of credit card hacks and identity thefts and you name it, and so I think that's something that is definitel…”
Sonnenshein: Crypto valuation requires analyzing on-chain data rather than DCF models
“Investors should be thinking about valuing these assets in a way that is distinct from the way that they may look at valuation for more traditional assets, where they're, they might be able to do a discounted cash flow, For Coca-Cola, but for Bitcoin, they act…”
Sonnenshein: Bitcoin is digital gold, not a daily transaction currency
“In the developed world, Bitcoin is at a minimum in today use case, It's digital gold. It's speculative in nature, and it may not be anything in our lifetimes other than a digital store of value. It certainly has the potential to be all kinds of other things, b…”
Sonnenshein: Grayscale is the PIMCO or Vanguard of digital currencies
“So Grayscale is the world's largest digital currency asset manager, and so Grayscale is to digital currencies, maybe what PIMCO is to bonds or Vanguard is to indices.”
Sonnenshein: Traditional brokerages like Schwab or TD will acquire crypto exchanges
“And we'll eventually have a lot of these become household names or maybe the Schwabs and the TDs end up acquiring them.”
Sonnenshein: Crypto custodians are segmenting infrastructure for RIAs, hedge funds, and retail
“I'd say today they're starting to be some division lines between them as to which types of investors or which types of counterparties their systems are better suited for. The same way you see custodianship be better suited, different firms for the RIA communit…”
Sonnenshein: Ethereum applications can easily be deployed on Ethereum Classic
“And pretty much anything that is being built on Ethereum can just as easily be deployed on Ethereum Classic. Very, very similar code bases with a couple of just different underlying philosophical distinguishing factors between the two protocols that really are…”
Sonnenshein: Bitcoin's lack of core protocol changes is a strength
“There's also still this shared appreciation that, 12 years into Bitcoin, we, Thankfully, haven't really broken it. We haven't really messed it up, and so it's kind of the old adage of, if it ain't broke, don't try and fix it, but while that has remained relati…”
Sonnenshein: Grayscale publicly traded products persistently trade at NAV premiums
“In pretty much all instances, to your point, on the public market, these products have persistently traded at premiums to their net asset values, and it's important to share, one, we don't trade in the public market.”
Sonnenshein: Institutional investors started adopting Ethereum-first strategies in 2020
“Twenty-twenty saw two new groups from our standpoint. One was the emergence of the Ethereum-only or Ethereum-first investor, which was just really interesting. I think kind of going alongside the proliferation and interest that we've It's seen in DeFi or decen…”
Sonnenshein: Paul Tudor Jones and Elon Musk provide institutional air cover
“So whether it's Paul Tudor Jones or it's Elon Musk, Either and or both of those types of folks' participation in this asset class and on a very public level provides an unbelievable amount of air cover for more folks to participate in the space as well.”
Sonnenshein: Grayscale manages $40 billion in crypto assets as of 2021
“And let's see, seven and a half years later, I'm now CEO of the company and we manage forty billion dollars.”
Sonnenshein: GBTC accounts for about 80% to 82% of Grayscale AUM
“Bitcoin, or the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is now probably occupying, let's see, call it about 80, 82% of our AUM, which has actually been coming down in value. It actually used to constitute A larger percentage of the Grayscale product families AUM.”
Sonnenshein: Grayscale Ethereum Trust tops $5B as world's largest ETH fund
“It's over five billion dollars now, that product, and that now has emerged as the largest Ethereum fund in the world.”
Sonnenshein: Crypto market infrastructure is significantly more robust than in 2017
“The development of derivatives, lending and borrowing, trading tools, tax lot reporting, order management systems, I mean, a lot of that infrastructure And a lot of those on-ramps were not in place back then, and you're dealing with a market that is much, much…”