According to a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Rothschild Investment Corporation increased its position to Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust by about 24% from October to late December.
Founded in 1908 in Chicago, Rothschild is a registered financial brokerage, dealer, and a member of SIPC and FINRA. Its founders, Monroe Rothschild and brother-in-law Samuel Karger, started the firm as a full-service brokerage.
Rothschild reported owning 30,454 shares of GBTC as of Dec. 31, 2020, which is up from the 24,500 shares it owned in October. The institutional investment manager of $1.4 billion disclosed that its shares in the trust were worth $975,000 at the end of 2020.
Rothschild started getting exposure to Bitcoin through Grayscale’s BTC Trust in mid-2017. With a relatively modest purchase of 539 GBTC shares. Though the company exited the position shortly after, it began buying again in 2019.
GBTC represents publicly quoted shares of Grayscale’s increasingly popular Bitcoin Trust. Which now has over $20 billion in assets under management. GBTC generated a record-high $217.1 million in average weekly inflows during the fourth quarter of 2020. As of press time, GBTC was trading at $34 per share.
The Bitcoin Trust is an SEC-reporting product. Investors don’t mind paying a premium to avoid worrying about storing and managing their assets. The firm marked its best year to date in 2020. As its AUM exploded by ten-fold from $2 billion at the start to over $20 billion in December.
Big Name Institutional Players
Rothschild increased its exposure to Bitcoin during a pivotal time in the cryptocurrency’s bull market. The leading cryptocurrency’s price nearly tripled in late 2020 before peaking near $42,000 earlier this month.
Bitcoin’s price action has cooled off somewhat in recent weeks, as it is currently hovering around $31,687.
Rothschild is one of several big-name institutional players to enter the cryptocurrency market in the past year. This trend is expected to continue as central banks and governments expand their monetary base to support the post-pandemic recovery.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are increasingly being viewed as a monetary hedge against inflation. The digital assets will be a topic of focus at the upcoming Davos Agenda.
The summit, which is hosted by the World Economic Forum, features two sessions focused on “resetting digital currencies.” Although the discussions are likely to center around central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). They magnify Bitcoin’s disruptive impact on traditional finance.
More than 2,500 representatives of the WEF Foundation will participate in the summit. The Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, and the CEO of Western Union, Hikmet Ersek, are among the notable figures that will take part in discussions relating to cryptocurrencies.
Government leaders from Chinese President Xi Jinping to German Chancellor Angela Merkel additionally will address how the virus has reshaped society and what policies are needed going forward in 2021, focusing on the central theme of “A Crucial Year to Rebuild Trust”.
They’ll be joined by others, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and World Health Organization Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
