Grayscale Bought 80% of All Litecoin Mined in February

Crypto fund manager Grayscale Investments has bought the majority of Litecoin mined last month, data from markets tool Bybt shows. Grayscale currently holds over 1.44 million Litecoin ($248.33 million), making it the firm’s third-largest crypto holding after Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The firm is one of few services in the US that allows accredited and institutional investors to purchase cryptocurrencies. It offers over nine crypto-based “trusts” that are available both as a subscription or as a tradable share on the OTC market. And while the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust bringing in the biggest capital from investors, Litecoin is seemingly attracting its own following too.

Miners produced over 201,600 Litecoin in the past 28 days. But as the supply increased, Grayscale customers were on the other end picking the majority of the new coins up. In the last 30 days, Grayscale’s Litecoin Trust (LTCN) acquired 174,900 Litecoin. (It's worth nothing that it's possible that some customers are moving their Litecoin to the trust rather than picking up more on the market).

As per tracker service LitecoinBlockHalf, every 2.5 minutes sees a single Litecoin “block” being solved by miners—or entities who expend their computing resources to validate transactions in turn of a reward. The miners, to cover costs and turn a profit, sell a majority of these rewards on the open market.

Current figures show miners earn over 12.5 Litecoin as a “reward.” Such figures mean over 300 Litecoin are mined per hour and 7,200 Litecoin are mined per day—meaning February saw over 201,600 Litecoin mined in 28 days (or 216,000 Litecoin in a 30-day period).

With the 174,900 Litecoin going into LTCN, the figures mean that the fund purchased nearly 80% of all new Litecoin mined in the past month.

Meanwhile, Grayscale’s infamous “premium” shows Litecoin demand is unmatched. As per the firm’s prospectus, each LTCN share contains just $15.70 worth of the cryptocurrency, while the share itself trades at $304.99 on the open market.

That is a premium of over 1,842.61% that investors are paying for gaining exposure to Litecoin via a regulated and secure fund without the hassle of managing private keys. It's far beyond the premium on any other Grayscale product.