Online broker Robinhood has added support for bitcoin and Ethereum-based cryptocurrency trusts from Grayscale Investments.
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
Users of the app can purchase Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) shares. As of 6 May 2022, the former had $23.05bn in assets under management, while the latter was worth $8.29bn.
GBTC and ETHE are products that provide investors with access to cryptocurrency, eliminating the need to purchase digital assets directly. Grayscale charges clients a 2% fee for managing the trusts.
Over the past year, units of these structures have traded at a significant discount to NAV. At the time of writing, GBTC has a discount of 24.83% and ETHE has a discount of 26.69%.
Grayscale hopes to solve this problem by converting the trusts into exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Earlier, the company’s head Michael Sonnenschein described this challenge as a top priority.
As a reminder, Grayscale Investments said in April 2022 that approval of a bitcoin futures ETF from Teucrium was the basis for a similar decision on the company’s own application.