Grayscale Near Trust and Grayscale Stacks Trust opened for accredited investors on May 23.
Grayscale Investments, the world’s largest crypto asset manager, has announced the creation and public launch of two new crypto investment trusts: Grayscale Near Trust and Grayscale Stacks Trust. The new trusts, which opened on May 23, allow eligible individual and institutional accredited investors to access daily subscriptions for diversified crypto exposure.
The Grayscale Near Trust is exclusively invested in NEAR, the native token of the Near Protocol, while the Grayscale Stacks Trust is exclusively invested in STX, the native token of the Bitcoin Layer 2 protocol Stacks. These trusts are among the first investment products solely invested in NEAR and STX tokens.
Rayhaneh Sharif-Askary, Grayscale’s Head of Product & Research, said that Grayscale is committed to helping “drive the crypto ecosystem forward” as blockchain tech stacks tackle the challenges of scalability.
The new investment trusts function similarly to Grayscale’s existing suite of single-asset investment trusts, providing investors with a familiar structure to gain exposure to these specific crypto assets. The launch of the Near and Stacks trusts comes as Grayscale’s odds of having an Ethereum ETF approved have significantly increased over the last week.
Senior ETF analysts at Bloomberg have raised their predictions from 25% to 75% on the likelihood of the Securities and Exchange Commission approving ether ETFs, citing an apparent “180” about-face in the agency’s thinking.
After initially withdrawing its application, Grayscale recently refiled its ether ETF application, removing language pertaining to staking and confirming that it will not participate in any other mechanisms associated to Ethereum’s proof of stake consensus algorithm.
Grayscale’s spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund, GBTC, continues to maintain one of the highest assets under management (AUM) among crypto funds, amassing $20.08 billion worth of funds as of May 23. The company recently appointed Goldman Sachs’ strategy exec Peter Mintzberg as its new CEO.
