Robinhood adds support for Grayscale crypto trusts

Online broker Robinhood has added support for Grayscale Investments’ cryptocurrency trusts linked to Bitcoin and Ethereum.

There’s two new ways to access crypto on @RobinhoodApp. You can start trading $GBTC and $ETHE today. https://t.co/n09aiEVhqEhttps://t.co/6tFrYCsmzx pic.twitter.com/AxKH7xZ0nS

— Grayscale (@Grayscale) May 6, 2022

App users can purchase shares of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and the Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE). As of May 6, 2022, assets under management for the former stood at $23.05 billion, and the latter — $8.29 billion.

GBTC and ETHE are products that give investors access to cryptocurrency without the need to buy digital assets directly. Grayscale charges clients a 2% management fee for running the trusts.

Over the past year, shares of these structures traded at a significant discount to NAV. At the time of writing, GBTC’s discount stood at 24.83%, ETHE’s at 26.69%.

Grayscale hopes to solve the problem by converting the trusts into exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Earlier the company’s chief executive, Michael Sonnenshein, called this task a top priority.

In April 2022, Grayscale Investments stated that the approval of Teucrium’s futures-based Bitcoin ETF would pave the way for a similar decision on its own application.