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by DamnYuppie 1908 days ago
The best way to get into Crypto from a traditional brokerage account is GBTC. It tracks mainly BTC and Ethereum. It is not a perfect match though, sometimes you pay a premium and sometimes you get a discount to the underlying cryptos. Currently it is at nearly a 18% discount where earlier in the year it was at a 10% premium (GBTC is currently 50.87, BTC is $59,515).

This is by no means a GREAT way to do it, just the best option currently if you are looking at crypto from a US based brokerage account.
2 comments
thebean11 1908 days ago
Wow, I figured it always traded at a premium. 18% discount is huge, am I missing some downside of this arb opportunity (buy GBTC sell short BTC or BTC futures)?
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ropiku 1908 days ago
GBTC has no redemption mechanism, you can wrap more BTC into GBTC but not the other way around. For ETFs this is what solves the arb. You can do your arb but you still need to offload GBTC at some point and the only option is to another buyer of GBTC.
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itsoktocry 1908 days ago
>The best way to get into Crypto from a traditional brokerage account is GBTC

So this is basically 100% speculation, because you can't even use the crypto you "purchase"? You're just hoping for prices to go up. How does that make sense for a purported currency? If people aren't using it, what is the value?

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DamnYuppie 1908 days ago
That isn't a very good argument. You might as well ask why do people invest in ETF's and mutual funds. The answer is because they view them as assets that will increase in value.
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