Grayscale Investments is one of the biggest names when it comes to the world of investments in digital assets. The company, which is most popularly known for its Bitcoin Investment Trust, has now expressed their plan to add a Stellar Lumens Trust as their latest investment product. The company made this announcement yesterday, stating that the Stellar Lumens Trust would be a ‘single-asset investment product’.
[Recommended Reading: What is Stellar? Everything That You Must Know About Stellar Lumens]
The Stellar Lumens Trust would join a number of other crypto-based single-asset investment products that Grayscale Investments already offers. As of this writing, the firm provides investors with the options to invest in a Bitcoin Investment Trust, Bitcoin Cash Investment Trust, Ethereum Investment Trust, Ethereum Classic Investment Trust, Litecoin Investment Trust, Ripple Investment Trust, ZCash Investment Trust and Zen Investment Trust.
Stellar has been a rising name in the cryptocurrency ecosystem over the past year. Despite the bear-markets, Stellar managed to hold on to its position in the top-10 cryptocurrencies, as of this writing, it is the 6th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. The Stellar platform was founded by Jed McCaleb, who also founded Ripple, as well as the Mt Gox cryptocurrency exchange.
With Stellar being added to the list of digital assets offered by Grayscale Investments, it is bound to attract a number of investors from the portfolio of clients and hedge funds that Grayscale holds. The platform has been getting quite popular, as IBM is planning to develop a cross-border payments network on the Stellar blockchain. Grayscale Investments’ managing director, Michael Sonnenshein commented on the real-world banking use-case of the platform in a statement to Fortune, saying:
“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.”
When Jed McCaleb started off the Stellar blockchain, the idea was to develop a low-cost blockchain-based payments platform which would help empower the financially weaker sections of the society to gain access to better financial services.
Talking to Fortune, Sonnenshein also dismissed the claims made by media reports that cryptocurrency firms were not being welcomed in Wall Street with much enthusiasm. Sonnenshein commented that crypto-based businesses are facing product delays and other setbacks, but that only means that the industry is ‘trying to get it right’.
Commenting on Grayscale’s plans for the future, Sonnenshein commented:
“The launch of this product will expand our coverage of the digital asset universe…[The company] will continue to provide investors access to established blockchain projects with substantial traction and resources.”
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