Arkham Intelligence has announced that it has discovered all of the wallets held by Grayscale, making it the first entity to accomplish this feat. The discovery reveals that Grayscale is the second largest holder of Ethers (ETH) in the ecosystem, but exactly how much does it hold?
How many Ethers does Grayscale hold in its portfolio?
The Arkham Intelligence teams have managed to identify all the wallets held by Grayscale, a first according to them. As a result, the crypto fund giant is believed to hold the equivalent of $5 billion worth of Ether, making it the second largest ETH holder.
Breaking: Arkham has identified the Grayscale Ethereum Trust on chain.
It is now the second largest ETH entity globally with $5B in ETH.
This had not been previously reported or publicly identified. pic.twitter.com/MQqKT6E9v6
– Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) September 1, 2023
” Arkham has identified the Grayscale Ethereum Trust on the blockchain. It is now the second largest ETH entity in the world with $5 billion in ETH. This had not been previously reported or publicly identified. “
To achieve this feat, Arkham Intelligence had to analyse and cross-reference Grayscale’s on-chain data in order to identify its various wallets, currently numbering 500, each of which holds less than $30 million.
It should be noted that Arkham Intelligence is indeed the first entity to have identified Grayscale’s various on-chain addresses, but that the company has already publicly revealed the amount of ETH it held on its own website:
Screenshot of Grayscale website showing assets held by the company
It is also likely that other addresses belonging to Grayscale have not yet been identified by Arkham Intelligence, as the platform only shows $92 million worth of BTC in the 500 wallet aggregate, whereas Grayscale is said to hold the equivalent of $15.97 billion, according to its website.
However, last November, Grayscale caused a stir by refusing to publish its Bitcoin addresses, at a time when part of the community was beginning to wonder whether the company really held its BTC.
In any case, Grayscale appears to hold various tokens such as LINK, UNI, BAT, MKR and AAVE, according to Arkham Intelligence. The on-chain analysis platform recently identified the entity behind a mysterious address holding $3 billion worth of Bitcoin, which ultimately turned out to belong to the Robinhood trading company
Grayscale still at the heart of the news
The news comes as Grayscale recently hit the headlines for winning a lawsuit against the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Grayscale itself had sued the SEC after the regulator refused to allow it to convert its flagship product, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), into a Bitcoin cash ETF.
According to the court, the SEC did not have to dismiss Grayscale’s application out of hand insofar as it was approving applications for Bitcoin Futures ETFs in parallel, even though the 2 ETFs are based on the same asset, namely Bitcoin. It was a victory for the ecosystem, and one that sent the price of BTC up 8% in the immediate aftermath, although the king of cryptocurrencies lost momentum just as quickly afterwards.
The news also directly benefited Grayscale: the price of its GBTC, which is supposed to be directly correlated to the Bitcoin price, was discounted by more than 48% last December. Boosted by the company’s victory against the SEC, this discount has now been reduced to just 18%:
Premium/Discount GBTC vs BTC price
Currently, GBTC earns Grayscale about $339 million annually, according to Bloomberg calculations.
