Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), the company’s flagship Bitcoin investment vehicle, is trading at its narrowest discount in almost two years as anticipation builds for potential approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States.
As per the most recent data from YCharts, as of October 13, the difference between GBTC and Bitcoin’s net asset value (NAV) had shrunk to 15.87%.
A mutual fund’s or ETF’s discount to NAV, expressed as a percentage, indicates how much it is currently trading below its net asset value. The indicator measures how far a security’s price has deviated from its actual worth.
According to the data, the discount for GBTC started to decrease after BlackRock and a number of other financial institutions submitted spot Bitcoin ETF applications in mid-June. At that time, the discount was 44% on June 15 and had decreased to 26.7% by July 5. Since then, the number has kept getting smaller.
According to CoinGecko, the last time GBTC’s discount was at a comparable level was in the first few days of December 2021, just one month after BTC reached its all-time high price of $69,000 on November 10.
Advocate for bitcoin Oliver Velez thinks that by year’s end, the market will have priced in the approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF.
GBTC’s discount, according to some analysts, like cryptocurrency investor Lyle Pratt, will continue to “evaporate” over the coming week or two as spot Bitcoin ETFs get closer to approval.
On October 13, news that the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States would not appeal the Grayscale judgment caused Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart to refer to the approval of the spot Bitcoin ETF as a “done deal” in an article.
The SEC had 45 days to request a rehearing, so Grayscale apparently provided a statement on October 15 stating that the court will now give its “final mandate” in seven calendar days.
“The Grayscale team remains operationally ready to convert GBTC to an ETF upon the SEC’s approval, and we look forward to sharing more information as soon as practicable,” the business allegedly stated.
