CRYPTO asset manager Grayscale Investments said it has begun to offer the Grayscale XRP Trust, helping to send the price of the seventh-largest digital asset up by almost 10 per cent.
The trust aims to provide investors the opportunity to gain exposure to the token that powers the XRP Ledger, a distributed, peer-to-peer network created to facilitate cross-border financial transactions, Grayscale said on Thursday (Sep 12). The investment product is available to eligible individual and institutional accredited investors.
Trusts are closed-end investments, meaning that there is a fixed number of shares available. The number of shares can vary in exchange traded funds (ETFs), usually making those investment products more tradable.
XRP rose as much as 9.8 per cent to around 59 US cents and is down around 8 per cent this year. The seventh-biggest cryptocurrency has an estimated market value of around US$32 billion, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Last year, XRP creator Ripple scored a partial victory over the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) when a judge ruled that only sales of the token to institutions, and not to retail users through exchanges, constituted a securities offering. The ruling opened the door to broader availability of XRP for trading.
Grayscale scored a victory against the SEC last year as well, when a court ruled that the agency could not reject the company’s plan for converting its trust into a spot Bitcoin ETF. Grayscale offers about two dozen products, investing into various cryptocurrencies. BLOOMBERG
