Grayscale CEO: If GBTC gets approval it could return a ‘couple billion dollars’ to investors

Published at: Feb. 26, 2023

Grayscale Investments CEO Michael Sonnenshein “can’t imagine” why the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) “wouldn’t want” to protect Grayscale investors and return the true asset value to them, in a recent podcast interview.

In an interview with What Bitcoin Did, a popular podcast hosted by Peter McCormack, on Feb. 25, Sonnenshein explained that the SEC “violated the administrative procedures act” by denying Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) as an approved spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF), in June 2022.

He explained that this act ensures the regulator doesn’t show “favoritism,” or act “arbitrary,” adding that by approving Bitcoin Futures ETF, and not approving “GBTC's conversion,” the SEC has acted “arbitrarily.”

Sonnenshein noted that when the SEC started approving the first Bitcoin ETFs, Grayscale took it “as a sign” that the SEC was “actually changing their attitude to Bitcoin.”

He stated that there is actually a “couple billion dollars” of capital that would immediately go right back into investors pockets, on an overnight basis, as the fund would "bleed back" up to its net asset value.

Sonnenshein explained that this is because GBTC is currently trading at a discount to its net-asset-value (NAV), but if it were to convert to an ETF, there would “no longer” be a discount or a premium, there’d be an “arbitraged mechanism” embedded.

He reiterated that Grayscale is in the process of “suing the SEC now,” and could have a decision challenging the SEC denial, by as late as “fall 2023.”

He also noted that Grayscale has over a “million investor accounts" with investors all over the world counting on the firm to “do the right thing for them,” and “can’t imagine” why the SEC wouldn’t want to “protect investors” and “return that value” to them.

Sonnenshein further added that he is not going “to shy” away from the fact that Grayscale has a “commercial interest” in this, saying that if the application to challenge the SEC is denied, Grayscale might be able to appeal the case at the U.S. Supreme Court.

This comes after the SEC denied Grayscale’s application to convert its $12-billion Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a spot-based Bitcoin ETF, in Dec. 2022, basing its decision on findings that Grayscale’s proposal did not sufficiently protect against fraud and manipulation.

The agency had made similar findings in a number of earlier applications to create spot based BTC ETFs.