Ethereum now more than crypto coder favourite: Grayscale

Bloomberg

While Bitcoin’s record-high grabs attention, its crypto compatriot Ethereum is
continuing to broaden its appeal beyond the software programming crowd.
Before this year, most investors’ first stop was Bitcoin, according to Michael Sonnenshein, managing director at Grayscale Investments LLC, which has investment products that track both and allows investments from institutional and accredited investors only.
But the Ethereum blockchain, the most actively used in the world, and its Ether token are getting more attention, he said.
“Over the course of 2020 we are seeing a new group of investors who are Ethereum first and in some cases Ethereum only,” Sonnenshein said in a phone interview. “There’s a growing conviction around Ethereum as an asset class.”
DeFi, of course, has been the hottest thing in crypto this past year, Ethereum also got users to pledge enough digital currency to enable
a system upgrade. And Ethereum “appears to be maintaining platform leadership status,” according to Bloomberg Intelligence strategist Mike McGlone.
While Bitcoin’s approximately 170% year-to-date gain would look good by just about any measure, Ether is up about 360% amid a boom in decentralised finance
(DeFi), which often uses its blockchain to power in what many instances have been described as blatant money grabs similar to those seen during the crypto bubble
of 2017.
The Grayscale Ethereum Trust, which tracks Ether’s price, has 29.6 million shares outstanding compared with 5.2 million at the end of 2019, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Inflows went from $20.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2019 to $204.1 million in the third quarter of 2020. And in the third quarter, over 17% of inflows into the Grayscale Ethereum Trust came from new institutional investors.