Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein departs company

A Goldman Sachs alum will take over as CEO in August

article-image

Artwork by Crystal Le

share

Michael Sonnenshein has stepped down as CEO of Grayscale Investments. 

The Wall Street Journal first reported the news Monday, saying that Grayscale will bring in a Goldman Sachs alum as the new CEO in August. A Grayscale spokesperson confirmed the news when reached. 

“Peter is an exceptional strategic leader with global expertise across the most prominent asset managers, which are critical ingredients as we position Grayscale for its next phase of growth,” Digital Currency Group CEO Barry Silbert said in a statement.

Peter Mintzberg served as the head of strategy for the asset management division at Goldman and also worked at BlackRock and Invesco. 

In a post on X, Sonnenshein said that he leaves Grayscale with “a deep gratitude” and said he’s “excited for what’s next.” Though it’s unclear what’s in store for the former executive at this stage.

Loading Tweet..

The change comes the same week as an expected decision on the ether ETF application. Grayscale filed to convert its ether trust into an ETF last year.

Analysts expect the SEC to deny the ether ETFs later this week. Grayscale withdrew its ether futures ET application earlier this month. 

During a Financial Times event earlier this month, Sonnenshein reportedly said that the firm wants to focus on its spot products.

Read more: Grayscale’s planned GBTC sibling is a page from BlackRock’s playbook

The exit also comes as Grayscale’s bitcoin ETF continues to see outflows. GBTC has the highest fee of the slate of spot bitcoin ETFs approved in January, at 1.5%.  BlackRock has seen significant success in the same period of time.

However, the firm notched inflows of $18 million last week, according to a CoinShares report from Monday morning.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Research

article-image

Firedancer begins delegating stake to Solana validators

article-image

A vote ending Monday could introduce a new layer of security for Ethereum’s largest liquid staking protocol

article-image

Framework’s Michael Anderson explains what tokens need in order to be successful

article-image

Conferences are pop-up innovation clusters—and filters for the riff-raff

article-image

Tariff front-running may have caused an artificial bounce in economic data earlier this year

article-image

Waka Flocka Flame-linked BaseDrop is raising some eyebrows