Ryze Recap 5/29: Smart Money Buying Bitcoin, Samsung Partners with Gemini
The biggest news in Bitcoin, in 2 mins or less. Presented by Ryze 🚀
Finally— its Friday. Here’s a quick summary of the biggest stories in Bitcoin for the day:
1. Grayscale is Accumulating Record Amounts of Bitcoin
Grayscale Investments, the largest asset manager in crypto, has been accumulating record amounts of Bitcoin. Since the Halving on May 11, Greyscale has purchased 18,910 BTC (~$180M), while only 12,337 have been mined since then. This means that Greyscale is purchasing over 1.5X the new issuance of Bitcoin.
The basics:
Grayscale offers unit investment trusts that investors can buy to get exposure to Bitcoin without actually purchasing and owning Bitcoin.
Grayscale buys Bitcoin when more people buy shares of GBTC, its Bitcoin Investment Trust.
Why it matters:
In Q1 2020, GBTC had a weekly record of $29M of new investments. In the last month, weekly new inflows haven’t been below $60M. The majority of Grayscale’s investors are accredited or institutional investors, indicating that smart money is bullish on Bitcoin.
Some speculate that Grayscale, being an SEC-regulated investment company, buys “virgin” Bitcoins— newly mined Bitcoin, to ensure that Bitcoin in its possession has never been used for nefarious purposes. If this is the case, we may eventually see a premium for virgin Bitcoin as the Halving has cut the rate of supply of Bitcoin in half. More on this to come.
2. Samsung Announces Partnership with Gemini
Samsung has partnered with Bitcoin exchange and custodian Gemini to enable users to buy, sell, and custody Bitcoin directly on their Samsung Galaxy smartphones.
Why it matters:
Samsung controls roughly a fifth of the global smartphone market, with over 300M units sold last year. A large player making strides towards Bitcoin adoption could spur other smartphone manufacturers to offer Bitcoin support as well.
Many see a poor user experience as a barrier to consumer Bitcoin adoption. Being able to buy, sell, and store Bitcoin natively on your phone lowers that barrier for millions of Samsung users worldwide.
That’s all folks! Thanks for reading, and we’ll be back on Monday with a recap of the biggest Bitcoin news from the weekend.