Grayscale, in the Spotlight as GBTC Discount Widens, Says DeFi Fund Now Trading

Grayscale Investments, manager of the world’s biggest publicly-traded bitcoin fund, said a new decentralized finance (DeFi) fund has started trading on over-the-counter markets.

The trading debut for the new fund, under the symbol “DEFG,” comes as Grayscale’s largest fund, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), is under distress, with its shares trading a record 47% discount to the value of the underlying cryptocurrency. Grayscale has said it’s operating business as usual, but speculation about the fund’s future has arisen among traders and on Twitter in recent weeks amid swirling questions about the finances of Grayscale’s parent company, Digital Currency Group, after a halt in crypto lending operations at another subsidiary, Genesis Global Capital. (CoinDesk is also a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group.)

Similar to Grayscale’s other multi-asset investment vehicles, the new DeFi fund is designed to give investors exposure to price movements of a basket of digital assets through a single investment vehicle via the stock market instead of buying the cryptocurrencies directly. DEFG tracks the CoinDesk DeFi Index (DFX), which includes the likes of Aave (AAVE), Uniswap (UNI) and Compound (COMP).

The components of the fund will be evaluated on a quarterly basis, according to the press release.

This is Grayscale’s 15th digital currency investment product to trade on OTC markets, according to the press release.