State Street Partners With Copper For Crypto Offerings

State Street Corp is partnering with London-based Copper to offer custodial services on cryptocurrencies for institutional customers.

The Boston-based bank expects to have the infrastructure available to its institutional clients by the end of this year, representing just one part of the firm’s expansion into crypto that included launching a dedicated digital division in June.

While some today might find this headline a bit “ehh whatever”, we wanted to acknowledge that this news would of been absolutely massive a year or so ago.

State Street, in case you’re wondering, has ~$44 trillion in assets under custody and administration. Despite the lack of clamor, it’s announcements like these that end up having resounding impacts on global BTC adoption in the long run.

"Today we’re talking custody, but sky’s the limit.” - Nadine Chakar, head of State Street Digital

Now, what else is flying under the radar? In a recent filing, we learned that Morgan Stanley held more than 13 million shares of Grayscale Investments’ Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) in 17 different portfolios at the end of 2021. Who knows how much they have now… The answer to the question “why is this stuff not talked about more?” is beyond us.

Grayscale Up Next?

Alright, now that we have covered the potential pitfalls of investing in a futures-based BTC ETF, let’s take a look at what Mr. Gensler, our trusty, “retail-protecting” savior from the SEC could do to actually help investors.

He could quickly and easily approve the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) to be converted into a spot ETF. Right now, the Trust is the largest Bitcoin investment vehicle in the world, holding approximately 3.5% of all Bitcoin in circulation.

So, why would it be epic for him to support the notion of GBTC converting into an ETF?

Because it would immediately close the discount that GBTC is trading at, and in turn, produce more than $8 billion in gains for investors overnight.

And right on cue (and as promised), GBTC has submitted its filing to convert into an ETF. Not only that, but DCG, the owners of Grayscale, announced a plan to increase their buyback of GBTC to $1 billion.

Your move Gary.