Genesis wants to sell $1.3B GBTC

A hearing on the motion will take place on Thursday, Feb. 8

February 5, 2024 12:07 pm

Genesis and Adobe modified by Blockworks

Bankrupt lender Genesis wants to offload around $1.3 billion of Grayscale’s bitcoin ETF GBTC.

In a filing on Friday, the Genesis debtors asked to sell shares of GBTC. If the court grants the motion, then Genesis could also sell its shares in Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust (ETHE) and Grayscale’s Ethereum Classic Trust (ETCG).

Genesis owns over 35 million shares of GBTC, 8 million shares of ETHE and nearly $3 million of ETCG. Based on the share prices of GBTC as of Jan. 30, the sales could fetch nearly $1.4 billion. However, the price of GBTC has fallen slightly from the closing price of $38.50 at the end of January.

At the time of publication, GBTC was trading around $38 a share.

Read more: Bitcoin ETF Tracker

In total, if the motion is approved, Genesis will sell nearly $1.6 billion in shares across the ETF and the two trusts.

In January, the FTX estate offloaded nearly $1 billion in GBTC shares, leading to large outflows for the bitcoin ETF — and the ETFs as a group.

CoinShares data showed that bitcoin ETFs recorded inflows of over $700 million last week, which outpaced the outflows.

GBTC has seen billions in outflows following its conversion to an ETF.

The court will hear the motion at a hearing on Thursday, Feb. 8 due to a separate filing that seeks to shorten the deadlines.

The bankrupt lender also wants to claim another 30 million GBTC shares that were pledged to Gemini but never transferred, according to the filing.

“The motion also seeks authority for Gemini to monetize the Initial Collateral (30,905,782 shares of GBTC) it holds for the benefit of Earn users,” the Gemini website said.

Last week, Genesis settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The settlement could see the bankrupt lender pay $21 million to the regulator pending on creditor repayment.

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