• Greyscale Investments has announced a new Stellar-Lumens offering for investors
• According to Greyscale’s managing director, the slump in Cryptocurrency prices has had little effect on the operations of the company

This week, Greyscale investments announced that it will be adding Stellar to its digital asset portfolio to be made available to investors along with its Lumens currency.

This is a large coup for Stellar as Greyscale investments is a subsidiary of the Digital Currency Group and have access to a large roster of prominent clients.

This trust isn’t Greyscale’s first venture into the crypto world. They already have trusts for currencies such as bitcoin and XRP. The Stellar-Lumens trust is the ninth one in their roster.

Demand for crypto remains high

Greyscale managing director Michael Sonnenshein has stated that this new product came about as a result of investor demand. Also, the firm wants to explore the real-world use of Stellar, especially as a bridge currency for transactions.

“I think the theory is a sound one. An American bank may be keeping large amounts of currencies in foreign banks, and to be able to bring those balances of foreign currencies onto a balance sheet as working capital is valuable,” he said. “Financial institutions won’t be required to hold balances all over the place. This will improve efficiency and shore up balance sheets for other uses.”

What is interesting is the emphasis on the use of cryptocurrency for cross-border transactions. This idea has been explored heavily in the last few years with institutions like Ripple and the National Bank of Kuwait making use of crypto to ensure that cross-border transactions are both cheaper and faster.

What Slump?

In the aftermath of the cryptocurrency price crash that occurred over the course of 2018, many firms associated with blockchain and cryptocurrency have closed shop as a result, leading to many questioning the future of the industry.

Sonnenshein disagrees and feels that the reports have been overstated and too quick to prophesy doom for crypto. He says that net inflows to Greyscale have been impressive and the launch of this new product shows that investors do still care about cryptocurrencies.

One of the reasons for this, he says, is that there are more cryptocurrency offerings that are regulated by government agencies and this gives investors more confidence.