For this week’s bonus episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Michael Sonnenshein, the CEO at Grayscale Investments.

Grayscale is a digital asset investment firm that aims to provide products and services to institutional and individual investors, it is well known for its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and now, its new bitcoin spot ETF product. The company was founded in 2014 and is one of the world’s largest digital asset currency managers. The GBTC fund holds over 3% of the outstanding bitcoin supply, worth tens of billions of dollars.

The firm and its executives have made headlines in the past for their tenacious efforts to get their bitcoin spot ETF approved after it was originally denied by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in June 2022 and later the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of it. And now, Grayscale’s bitcoin spot ETF was approved. 

We dive into what a spot bitcoin ETF approval means for GBTC and market demand. We also discussed competition between issuers, fee structures and why regulated bitcoin exposure matters as well as what a spot bitcoin ETF could mean for the crypto space.

Chain Reaction comes out every Thursday at 12:00 p.m. ET, so be sure to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to keep up with the action.