Neither Grayscale or Chainlink made any commentsbut a “Grayscale Chainlink Trust”product may not be such a far-fetched idea either, given the rapid rise of LINK and its growing use case in the past year.The news, however, helped the Chainlink “marines”get charged to the newsand rightly so.
The world’s largest crypto asset manager and investment platform is Grayscale. It holds over nine “trusts” worth over $25.5 billion worth of different cryptocurrencies (mainly Bitcoin). Its products are some of the only regulated crypto-offerings in the US for trade on public markets.
How the products of Grayscale operate is like this: the asset manager connects with a custodian (such as Coinbase) to hold a certain amount of cryptocurrency connected to that share of “trust.” Investors can then either subscribe or buy those shares on the open market (with a six-month lock-in).
Investors make money along with their holdings’ growth. The price of the trust share increases as the valuation of the underlying crypto increases. And Grayscale charges a sizable premium in the range of 10% to as much as 200% for the legally compliant operation.
In a similar way, a Chainlink trust will operate. A set amount of LINK per share would be owned by Grayscale, and accredited investors would be able to buy it through regulated OTC brokers in the US
