Bitcoin Whale Grayscale Adds Stellar Lumens to Its Lineup

Bitcoin Whale Grayscale Adds Stellar Lumens to Its Lineup

Grayscale Investments, the world’s largest cryptocurrency investment firm, has added Stellar Lumens to its lineup of crypto investment funds. The addition brings its nest of cryptos to nine digital assets.

Also read: Bakkt Acquisition: Backend Buyup to Boost Crypto Amid Payments Wars

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See Lumens, Like Lumens… Grayscale Eyes a Balance Sheet Star

Grayscale’s addition of Stellar Lumens (XLM) to its portfolio came off the back of investor demand. Jed McCaleb’s Stellar Lumens project sees a future as part of the traditional banking landscape and it would appear Grayscale agrees. As managing director Michael Sonnenshein told Fortune:

“I think the theory is a sound one. 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.”

That particular use case–freeing up banks’ working capital needs–is similar to one of Ripple Labs’, of which McCaleb was a co-founder.

The addition of XLM to its product suite means Grayscale now has portfolios in nine cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Horizen (ZEN), Litecoin (LTC), Ripple (XRP), Zcash (ZEC), and Stellar (XLM) in addition to its behemoth Grayscale Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC).

Grayscale, The Bitcoin Whale

Some may characterize the company’s impact as more dolphinian in nature, but the asset management firm, according to research group Diar, holds slightly over one percent of all circulating bitcoin. That amounts to around 203,000 BTC.

While that is now worth under a billion dollars as a result of the prolonged bear market, Diar reported that record “inflows… have resulted in record Bitcoin equivalent holdings with December notching up a little versus the start of the previous month.” Grayscale lists the fund’s current value at just under $770 million USD.

The addition of XLM comes only months after the company created its Zen Fund, adding ZEN holdings to its lineup. Its largest and by far most popular fund is its bitcoin fund.

Have your say. Will Grayscale’s interest in Stellar Lumens be a boost to the image of XLM?

Images via Pixabay