Grayscale Adds Stellar as Latest Cryptocurrency Investment Trust

Digital currency investment group Grayscale confirmed it had successfully launched its latest fund, dedicated to Stellar’s Lumens (XLM) token, in a tweet Jan. 17.

Grayscale, which now operates nine cryptocurrency funds, timed the move to coincide with a change of image for its products, renaming all its single-currency products to trusts.

The company serves “single-asset investment products that provide exposure to” Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Horizen (ZEN), Litecoin (LTC), Ripple (XRP) and Zcash (ZEC), along with Stellar.

Speaking to Fortune, managing director Michael Sonnenshein said the latest addition had arisen from investor demand to gain exposure to XLM’s price movements.

“I think the theory is a sound one,” he said about Stellar’s business proposition for bridging crypto to fiat currency conversions, continuing:

“An American bank may be keeping large amounts of currencies in foreign banks, and to be able to bring those balances of foreign currencies onto a balance sheet as working capital is valuable. Financial institutions won’t be required to hold balances all over the place. This will improve efficiency and shore up balance sheets for other uses.”

Stellar saw a buoyant Q4 after a deal with cryptocurrency wallet provider Blockchain.com to distribute XLM worth $125 million in an airdrop, with the aim of increasing awareness and adoption.

Grayscale meanwhile faced a mixed year in 2018. By December, after Bitcoin had fallen to 15-month lows of $3,130, the company’s Bitcoin Trust became worth less than $1 billion for the first time during the year.

Research by cryptocurrency industry newsletter Diar at the time added that Grayscale’s holdings amounted to just over 1 percent of the total number of bitcoins in circulation.

Stellar is currently up 1.22 percent on the day, trading at $0.10.