Public companies hold almost $7B in Bitcoin in heads-up to Grayscale

Bitcoin (BTC) holdings at public companies topped $6.8 billion this year as newcomers catch up with industry heavyweight Grayscale.

According to monitoring resource Coin98 Analytics, a total of 13 public companies have now invested in Bitcoin.

Putting Grayscale’s “sun” in the shade

Asset management giant Grayscale remains the largest BTC player with 449,596 BTC ($5.14 billion) under its control, followed by CoinShares’ 69,730 BTC ($797 million).

MicroStrategy, the firm which made waves when it announced it had moved to adopt a “Bitcoin Standard,” has 38,250 BTC ($437.1 million). In fourth place is Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital, which controls 16,551 BTC ($189.1 million).

In total, the 13 companies have almost 600,000 BTC ($6.86 billion) locked up, a number which is increasing with Grayscale thus far remaining in the lead.

Public companies’ Bitcoin holdings. Source: Coin98 Analytics/ Twitter

“Grayscale is the sun,” its confident CEO Barry Silbert commented on Coin98 Analytics’ numbers.

For all Silbert’s publicity activities, however, it is MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor who has arguably made the biggest impression in cryptocurrency this year. After the purchase, Saylor began giving regular interviews on Bitcoin’s supremacy over fiat currency and continues to be highly active on social media with the same message.

Replying to a tweet by Silbert on Oct. 12, in which he discussed the Bank of England’s perspective on Bitcoin, Saylor said:

“#Bitcoin is the first digital monetary system capable of storing all the money in the world for every individual, corporation, and government in a fair & equitable manner, without losing any of it.  If that’s not intrinsically valuable, what is?”

Bitcoin shows clear dollar divergence

The past month meanwhile has seen Bitcoin diverge from both U.S. dollar strength and VIX volatility, providing new opportunities for investors keen to diversify.

According to a comparison from Cointelegraph Markets and Digital Assets Data, it is stocks in the form of the S&P 500 and gold which now see increasing correlative patterns with BTC.

Macro asset returns comparative chart. Source: Cointelegraph/ Digital Assets Data

This has in turn boosted existing anticipation of a clean divergence away from traditional markets — a “decoupling” for Bitcoin paves the way for significant price gains, analysts argue.