GBTC's Billion Dollar Bitcoin Loss | Rise Of Corporate NFTs

Unlike its rivals, Grayscale converted GBTC from a closed-end trust that had recently been trading below its net-asset value to an exchange-traded fund, an investor-friendly format designed to change hands very close to its NAV. No wonder many investors rushed to exit upon the vehicle’s conversion and avoid Grayscale's steep 1.5% annual fund expense fee, almost four times higher than that of runner-up Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin’s 0.39%.

The fund, known by its ticker symbol GBTC, had assets of $28.6 billion just before the spot bitcoin ETFs were unleashed. That had dwindled to $23.7 billion when the data was tallied for Thursday. About two-thirds of the $4.87 billion decline reflected an 11% decrease in bitcoin’s price since January 11. The cryptocurrency traded at $41,111 on Friday afternoon in New York.

The Series A round valued the six-year-old company at more than $1.2 billion and included existing shareholders as well as new investors. Hashkey declined to identify its backers but OKX Ventures, the investment arm of crypto exchange OKX, is a major one, according to people familiar with the matter. Unicorns are startup companies with equity values in excess of $1 billion.

Tether’s popularity with criminals is illustrated by surging volume of cyber fraud, money laundering and schemes like “sextortion,” a form of blackmail involving threats to post sexual content or information about a person, and “pig butchering,” a socially engineered romance designed to lure victims into transferring large sums, according to the agency.