May. 07, 2022
Dear SEC, I write to you as a GBTC shareholder from New York, in support of the conversion of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust to an ETF. By not approving this conversion, you are not protecting me, the investor – the very person you were appointed to protect. Instead, you are hurting folks investing for their futures and their retirements. I purchased GBTC at a 15% premium to Bitcoin, and now the security is trading at a 30%+ discount because the SEC wont consider doing the right thing and approving the conversion to an ETF. Investors need access to bitcoin, and big institutions like Fidelity are approving the allocation to their 401ks, so why not give investors options? Last October, you approved futures-backed Bitcoin ETFs, but continue to reject applications for spot Bitcoin ETFs. Given that investors use both vehicles to gain exposure to the same underlying asset, Bitcoin—from which both vehicles derive their prices—we, as investors, should be able to choose if we’d like direct or futures-based exposure to that asset. Furthermore, the discount to NAV in GBTC has been around 25%, on average, this year. This means that the price of GBTC is less than the price of Bitcoin, the asset itself. Given that GBTC has about $30bn in AUM, existing shareholders like me are experiencing a destruction of value of around $7.5 billion. GBTC is the world’s largest publicly-traded cryptocurrency fund, with hundreds of millions in daily trading volume. It holds approximately 3.4% of all Bitcoins outstanding, and is held by more than 850,000 investors, like me. I’m writing from NYC, with gratitude for the opportunity to express my view to you and with the hope and expectation that you will approve this conversion and protect the interest of investors. Sincerely, Peter Mistina