At the end of 2021 Morgan Stanley owned at least 13 million GBTC shares

At the end of 2021 Morgan Stanley owned at least 13 million GBTC shares

Morgan Stanley seems to have kept more than 13 million shares of the Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) from Grayscale Investments in 17 portfolios, as can be seen from the last week.

The GBTC shares were rated with around $ 458 million, as a block works analysis of the disclosures found showed. The positions made between 0.7 % and 1.1 % of the net assets of the respective fund, as can be seen from the documents.

The $ 10.7 billion, heavy Morgan Stanley Growth Portfolio kept around 4.3 million GBTC shares at the end of 2021, most of all 17 funds. At that time, the shares in the portfolio had a value of $ 147 million.

The total number of the fund was around 18 % above the approximately 3.6 million GBTC shares he held at the end of September.

The Morgan Stanley Insight Fund added further shares of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust in the fourth quarter, as a separate submission shows. The offer that currently managed a fortune of $ 3.7 billion had more than 1.7 million GBTC shares with a value of almost $ 60 million on December 31.

submissions published in November showed that the Insight Fund had around 1.5 million GBTC shares at the end of the third quarter.

GBTC was founded in 2013 and currently manages a fortune of $ 25.4 billion. Suitable stocks are noted at the OTCQX.

A spokesman for Morgan Stanley refused to comment on the positions in GBTC and the idea of ​​the company for the proposed conversion of the trust.

The entries for GBTC conversion continue to flow in

The disclosures were published about a week after the start of a Grayscale marketing campaign, in which investors were asked to send securities and Exchange Commission Comments on their proposal for the conversion of GBTC into an ETF.

hundreds of letters on this topic were submitted to the regulatory authority.

Paul Grewal, Chief Legal Officer at Coinbase, who wrote in December to support the conversion, was enough for a "Nofollow noopener" Target = "_ Blank" href = "https://www.sec.gov/commets/sr-nyca-2021-90/srnysearca202190-20118548-271429.pdf"> Another letter on March 3.

The average daily trade volume of Bitcoin in 2021 was around $ 45 billion, he stated in the letter. With regard to the hourly prices for Bitcoin on the four stock exchanges that were used as inputs for the pricing of the GBTC, the stock exchanges showed a deviation of less than 20 basis points in 97 % of cases over a time horizon of about three years.

"The Bitcoin markets have characteristics and maturity that correspond to some of the strongly traded markets for raw materials and US shares," wrote Grewal.

"The liquidity and transparency of the Bitcoin markets limits their susceptibility to manipulations, which in our opinion the suitability of Bitcoin as a basic value for an [Exchange-Traded Product]."

Zac Prince, the founder and CEO of Blockfi, spoke for the changeover from a letter from 22. February to the Sec and found that the approval of the proposal by the agency would benefit the US financial markets and investors.

"We are currently falling behind other capital markets on which spot cryptocurrency products are already listed," wrote Prince.

"US consumers who invest in their pension or tax accounts in GBTC lose money because the product is a trust and not an ETF."

The regulatory authority, which has not yet approved ETF, which invests directly in Bitcoin, will probably decide in July the conversion of GBTC into an ETF if its 240-day review period occurs.

Several spot bitcoin ETFs were launched in Canada in 2021, and the introduction of ETPs that invest directly in Bitcoin, Ether and other crypto systems has become more important.

lawyers who represent Grayscale have argued that the approval of a Bitcoin futures-based ETF is a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act by the SEC and not a spot bitcoin ETF.

Kristin Smith and Jake Cervinsky, Executive Director or Head of Policy of the Blockchain Association, asked the SEC to approve the conversion of GBTC in November.

Smith said Blockworks last month in an interview that she believes it will "take a while" until the SEC approves a spot bitcoin ETF, and found that the Blockchain Association evaluates ways to advance the process.

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The contribution Morgan Stanley owned at least 13 million GBTC shares at the end of 2021.