How much Bitcoin does Grayscale actually buy? Can it lead to a supply shortage?

Hello my fellow bloggers! Have you ever wondered how much Bitcoin does Grayscale actually buys? We all see this in news that Grayscale today bought XXX bitcoins, but is it many BTC or just a drop in the ocean? Let’s dive in and find out.

The good thing about Grayscale buying activity is that it is public. The company doesn’t try to hide its crypto balance and, in fact, uses it as an advertisement for new investors. As per today Grayscale has the following portfolio:

On the one hand, 648k BTC they have seems a lot. On the other hand, daily change of 16 BTC doesn’t seem big right? They’ve already bought almost all they needed in 2020? They are not likely to buy any significant amount of BTC in 2021? No, this is not the case. Let’s take a look at the chart below:

All the miners combined were able to “produce” ~26000 BTC this year. At the same time Grayscale bought ~40 000 BTC. In other words, despite of mining, the actual number of circulating BTC available for you to buy dropped. Grayscale is just a one company on the market and it buys 1.5 times more BTC than being mined for the same period. I don’t need to say there are other companies that follow the same path. They are not as big as Grayscale yet, but who knows how fast will they grow?

Ok, so now we established that Grayscale buy a lot of BTC, but is it good or bad? It is without a doubt good for BTC price. Whales buying BTC during the recent deep supported the price and made todays BTC gains possible. On the other hand, do we really want all BTC to go to corporate giants? Cryptocurrencies were designed to serve the people and reduce the influence various banks and trusts have on us. If more than a half of all BTC and ETH will be in the hands of a few companies, can it still fulfil its goals? I believe this situation can’t kill the spirit of cryptomarket. Whales can have a hug portion of BTC, but they still can’t control the flow of it. Moreover, they can’t buy more than people. Let’s take a look at the chart below.

The chart shows who owns US equity market shares. As you see, the biggest chunk is owned by the people. All types of trusts and companies have no bounds to invest, but still can’t buy more than the people. On cryptomarket all these companies have legal bounds nowadays. I don’t know what would happen next, but at this point we are save. Nobody will take our crypto.