ZEN Rises for 3 Consecutive Days, Can "Grayscale Exclusive" Buy Alongside?
Original Article Title: "ZEN Sees 3-Day Consecutive Gains, Can Grayscale Trust Holdings Follow the Buy Signal?"
Original Article Link: shaofaye123, Foresight News
Recently, Grayscale has successively launched the Optimism Trust Fund and the Lido Trust Fund. Despite a temporary pullback, assets in the trust funds, including SUI and ZEN, have continued to rise. Are Grayscale's trust funds truly a collection of blue-chip tokens, and are they profitable in the long term? This article takes you through an overview of the 26 crypto trusts currently offered by Grayscale and their investment returns.
Grayscale Crypto Trust Overview
Grayscale is a digital asset management company established in 2013, primarily offering various cryptocurrency trust funds aimed at providing investors with a legitimate, regulated investment channel. As one of the world's largest cryptocurrency asset management firms, it manages billions of dollars in assets. To date, Grayscale has launched 26 crypto trusts.
Grayscale Trust Funds are a series of cryptocurrency investment products provided by Grayscale, allowing investors to indirectly hold cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum without the need to directly purchase and manage the assets. Each trust fund is pegged to a specific cryptocurrency, such as the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust Fund (GBTC) and the Grayscale Ethereum Trust Fund (ETHE). Through these trust funds, investors can buy and sell shares of cryptocurrency on the public market akin to investing in traditional stocks.

In addition to single-currency trust funds, Grayscale's combination funds of various coins also hold significant investment reference value. The crypto trusts under Grayscale currently go through three main stages in their product cycles, excluding ETFs.
· PRIVATE PLACEMENT: Initially, Grayscale products are offered through private placements, allowing eligible investors to participate in cryptocurrency investments. The shares purchased in private placements have an initial lock-up period of one year. Currently, trusts like the Grayscale Sui Trust and Grayscale Lido DAO Trust are in this stage.
· PUBLIC QUOTATION: In the form of public trading, this stage allows all investors to participate in cryptocurrency investments. However, due to the lack of a continuous buyback plan, publicly traded shares may trade at a premium or discount to the value of their underlying assets. Currently, assets like MANA, GLNK, and DEFG are in this stage.
· SEC REPORTING: Grayscale is the first company to report to the SEC. The SEC reporting requirement will further enhance the disclosure level, provide greater transparency to investors, and subject the products to additional regulatory oversight. Currently, ETCG, ZCSH, HZEN, and others are in this phase.
In the Long Run, Beating BTC Is Challenging
According to reports, Grayscale had a significant impact on the cryptocurrency market during the bull run from 2020 to 2021, when Grayscale significantly increased the asset under management of the Bitcoin Trust, bringing in a large number of institutional investors into the crypto space. However, other crypto assets launched by Grayscale during this period have shown mixed short-term performance and have struggled to outperform BTC in the long term.

To track the investment return of Grayscale funds, the author recorded the token prices at the launch of Grayscale funds and on December 23, forming the above chart. Over time, Grayscale's launch of crypto trust products was concentrated before 2018 and 2021, and these were mostly at high points or later stages of bull markets. This phenomenon may be related to the fact that Grayscale's fund launches require a relatively long period and a mature market. And this December, Grayscale has once again started to concentrate on launching trust funds, whether this time it can break the cycle of short-term peaks.
In terms of investment return, in the long term, (including BTC, ETH), tokens showing positive investment return account for only about 48%, which is lower than the random 50% probability of a coin flip. Moreover, their investment return is far below that of BTC, showing a negative EV in the long run.
In the short term, the tokens launched by Grayscale did indeed have glorious moments, but most of them occurred before their launch. Even though XRP has experienced a strong rebound, it has not yet surpassed its previous high, and after three consecutive days of gains, ZEN can barely maintain an 18% return on investment. Although some star tokens have reached their highs after launch, when viewed from a long-term annualized perspective, after holding for a long 7 years, their return rate is even below 10%. However, different entry timing has a more significant impact on investment return, with Grayscale concept coins almost all outperforming the average bull market increase if they accumulate during a bear market bottom. Observing assets that have not shown significant movements at this time may lead to decent gains next year.
Grayscale's holdings of tokens have different indicative roles at different times in the market cycles, in this sense, Grayscale's strict selection process indeed has an impact.
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