Grayscale adds Stellar Lumens, citing demand and application
Reports of cryptocurrency's death have been greatly exaggerated, Grayscale maintains.
Grayscale, a big money cryptocurrency investment trust firm, has just added Stellar Lumens to its list of offerings, with Grayscale managing director Michael Sonnenshein citing popular demand and a certain level of potential real world application for the cryptocurrency as the driving factors behind the addition.
Soundness
"I think the theory is a sound one, Sonnenshein said of the purpose envisioned for Stellar. "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."
It's similar to the theory behind XRP, but despite the many shared similarities there are still a lot of differences between Stellar and XRP.
In an interview with Fortune around the new product launch, Sonnenshein also took the time to suggest that reports of the cryptocurrency slump in 2018 have been vastly overstated.
He pointed at ongoing interest in new Grayscale products such as the Stellar Lumens trust, and the relatively constant pumping of money into Grayscale, even as cryptocurrency prices declined over 2018.
Like many crypto enthusiasts, the institutional investors and well-heeled speculators that Grayscale is aiming at don't seem overly concerned with a bit of time in the red.
It was only in the third quarter of 2018 that Grayscale turned a profit, with XRP and bitcoin price rises bringing some gains to the table. But in the year overall, Grayscale products were still running at a considerable loss.
Of course, next to the approximately 5,000% bitcoin gains enjoyed by Grayscale since the inception of the bitcoin investment trust, a drop of 50% in one year may not be too immediately worrying.
Sonnenshein remains confident in the future of cryptocurrency, and far from seeing a withdrawing of high-end interest, sees more people taking careful positions in the emerging asset class.
Disclosure: At the time of writing the author holds ETH
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