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I'm waiting patiently with cash un my coinbase account waiting for the right time to make the trade. Who else is considering buying diversifying a bit more? - Btc, xrp, eth, ada or vet?
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Author: Ziggy_Star_Lord

I am pretty new to crypto and havent used shapeshift yet. The first time i deposited EUR to Coinbase and bought BTC there and sent it to Bittrex. At Bittrex i proceeded to trade it for VTC. I wonder if that's the best way to do it. Can someone please enlighten me?

I am pretty new to crypto and havent used shapeshift yet. The first time i deposited EUR to Coinbase and bought BTC there and sent it to Bittrex. At Bittrex i proceeded to trade it for VTC. I wonder if that's the best way to do it. Can someone please enlighten me?

Coinbase Adds Its First Ethereum Token to Professional Trading Platform #news #marketcap #market #icos #contract #consulting #legal #advise #solutions #seo #eth #btc #bitcoin #digital #marketing #industry #sucess #crowdsale #investment #boost #formula #whitepaper
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Author: crypterxmarket

Posted at: August 8, 2018 at 02:36AM
By:
Coinbase Hikes Daily Purchase Threshold to $25,000, Enables Instant Trading #cryptocurrency #btc #eth https://t.co/fh5vbT3F1A
Automate your Trading via Crypto Bot : https://ift.tt/2EU8PEX
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I'm not in the US, and not currently in one of its 33 supported countries, neither am I from them. Does that mean that when I am in one of these countries I can trade? One of my parents stays in one of these countries, and I am moving there soon.
If not, is there anything else I can use for BTC/ETH trading? I have like $20 worth of BTC in my Coinbase and I don't want it to just lie around.

Coinbase have recently opened up their earn feature to multiple new users so we are making a new thread to allow everyone to have access to fresh links in order to complete the Coinbase Earn quizzes and earn a good chunk of money very easily!
1st off Coinbase allows new users to get $10 Worth of bitcoin for free, when you first buy $100 worth of bitcoin. Just click HERE and purchase atleast $100 worth of bitcoin to get the free bitcoin.
COINBASE EARN
Direct Link for Coinbase Earn - https://www.coinbase.com/earn
A classic for many many months now, Coinbase Earn allows users to sign up and earn crypto currency for free. Most of these seem to be on a waitlist basis and personally ive heard people can be accepted straight away or wait months to get in so its kinda unknown how long it will take!
If you do get accepted however, these are the following tasks and answers to the questions! Good Luck!
Earn up to $50 of OXT
Click here and answer the questions
Answers are:

1. A peer to peer privacy tool.
2. The OXT Token, a Web3 Wallet, and the Orchid App
3. Support for multihop configurations between bandwidth providers.

Earn up to $50 of EOS
Click here and answer the questions
Answers are:

1. Blockchain protocol for fast scalable transactions
2. Delegated proof of stake
3. Fast free transfers
4. Stake EOS tokens
5. Upgradable smart contracts

Earn up to $50 worth of XLM
Click here
Watch the videos to earn your first $10 then invite 4 other users to get an extra $40 worth
Answers are:

1. Stellar is a decentralized coin that unites currencies
2. Facilitating low cost universal payments
3. Fast, secure, and global
4. To issue and exchange tokens quickly
5. It relies on the cooperation of trusted nodes

Earn up to $9 of COMO
Click here
Watch the videos and answer the questions to earn $9

1. Earning interest on your Crypto
2. Supply a crypto asset as collateral
3. COMP token holders

Earn up to $5 of Kyber
Quiz Answers

1. Exchange one ethereum token for another.
2. Ethereum
3. Liquidity

Now you have your free cryptocurrency in your account you will want to learn how to sell it and withdraw for that sweet beer money!
\*TO REDEEM IN GBP from Coinbase*\**
Sign in at https://pro.coinbase.com/ with your Coinbase account details.

1. Go to 'My Wallets' (top right corner near your user box)
2. Click on the 'Deposit' banner in the big Deposit & Withdrawal box on the left side.
3. Pick XLM/BAT, whichever you want to deposit.
4. Click on 'Coinbase Account' (option on the right side of the white box)
5. Click on 'Max' and Deposit it.
6. Now go to 'Trade' (One of the top menus)

7a) Pick BTC if you want to trade your XLM for GBP, (FIRST you have to exchange your XLM to BTC, then your BTC to GBP. ) After picking BTC, click on XLM-BTC, then 'Sell' and 'Max'. After that, click GBP, then BTC-GBP, click 'Buy' and 'Max'. These exchanges are instantaneous.
7b) To withdraw your BAT, you need to pick ETH, and exchange your BAT for ETH, then change the ETH for GBP. Be aware that the BAT-ETH and ETH-GBP exchanges took around a day for me altogether, don't be worried if the money doesn't appear immediately exchanged.

1. Go to 'My Wallets' again, click Withdraw, to Coinbase account and click max.

Now go back to www.coinbase.com Your GBP should've arrived, and now you are able to click 'Withdraw'. I withdrew via Paypal, as Bank account transfers cost you £1. (Every penny counts, right?!). These options will come up when you click 'Withdraw' from your GBP wallet in Coinbase.

I have been here for many previous altcoin seasons (2013,2017 etc) and wanted to share knowedle. It's a LOOONG article.
The evaluation of altcoins (i.e not Bitcoin) is one of the most difficult and profitable exercises. Here I will outline my methodology and thinking but we have to take some things as a given. The first is that the whole market is going up or down with forces that we can't predict or control. Bitcoin is correlated with economic environments, money supply increases, safe havens such as Gold, hype and country regulations. This is an impossible mix to analyze and almost everyone fails at it. That's why you see people valuing Bitcoin from $100 to $500k frequently. Although I am bullish on the prospects of Bitcoin and decentralization and smart contract platforms, this is not the game I will be describing. I am talking about a game where you try to maximize your BTC holdings by investing in altcoins. We win this game even if we are at a loss in fiat currency value. To put it another way:

If you are not bullish in general on cryptocurrencies you have no place in investing or trading cryptocurrencies since it's always a losing proposition to trade in bubbles, a scientifically proven fact. If on the other hand you are then your goal is to grow your portfolio more than you would if holding BTC/ETH for example.

Bitcoin is the big boy

How the market works is not easily identifiable if you haven't graduated from the 2017 crypto university. When there is a bull market everything seems amazingly profitable and things keep going up outgrowing Bitcoin by orders of magnitude and you are a genius. The problem with this is that it only works while Bitcoin is going up a little bit or trades sideways. When it decides to move big then altcoins lose value both on the way up and on the way down. The second part is obvious and proven since all altcoins from 2017 are at a fraction of their BTC value (usually in the range of 80% or more down). Also, when BTC is making a big move upwards everyone exits altcoins to ride the wave. It is possible that the altcoin market behaves as an inversed leveraged ETF with leakage where in a certain period while Bitcoin starts at 10k and ends at 10k for example, altcoins have lost a lot of value because of the above things happening.

We are doing it anyway champ!

OK so we understand the risks and just wanna gambol with our money right? I get it. Why do that? Because finding the ideal scenario and period can be extremely profitable. In 2017 several altcoins went up 40x more than BTC. But again, if you don't chose wisely many of them have gone back to zero (the author has first hand experience in this!), they have been delisted and nobody remembers them. The actual mentality to have is very important and resembles poker and other speculative games:
A certain altcoin can go up in value indefinitely but can only lose it's starting investment. Think about it. You either lose 1 metric or gain many many more. Now that sounds amazing but firstly as we said we have the goal to outperform our benchmark (BTC) and secondly that going up in value a lot means that the probability is quite low. There is this notion of Expected Value (EV) that poker players apply in these kind of situations and it goes like that. If you think that a certain coin has a probability let's say 10% to go up 10X and 90% probability it goes to zero it's an even bet. If you think that probability is 11% then it's a good bet, a profitable bet and you should take it. You get the point right? It's not that it can only go 10X or 0X, there is a whole range of probability outcomes that are too mathematical to explain here and it doesn't help so much because nobody can do such analysis with altcoins. See below on how we can approximate it.

How to evaluate altcoins

A range of different things to take into account outlined below will form our decision making. Not a single one of them should dictate 100% of our strategy.

Basics

It's all about market cap. Repeat after me. The price of a coin doesn't mean anything. Say it 10 times until you believe it. I can't remember how many times I had conversations with people that were comparing coins using their coin price instead of their market cap. To make this easy to get.

If I decide because the sky is blue to make my coin supply 100 Trillion FoolCoins with a price of $0.001 and there is another WiseCoin with a supply of 100 Million and price of $1 then FoolCoins are more expensive. - Alex Fin's Cap Law

Fundamental analysis

This is done usually in the stock world and it means that each company has some fundamental value that includes it's assets, customers, growth prospects, sector prospects and leadership competence but mostly centered in financial measures such as P/E ratios etc. Valuation is a proper economic discipline by itself taught in universities. OK, now throw everything out of the window!.
This kind of analysis is impossible in vague concepts and innovations that are currently cryptocurrencies. Ethereum was frequently priced at the fictional price of gas when all financial systems on earth run on the platform after decades (a bit of exaggeration here). No project is currently profitable enough to justify a valuation multiple that is usually equal to P/E in the thousands or more. As such we need to take other things into account. What I do is included in the list below:

• Check Github. You need to make sure there is active development for the platform and it's a very bad sign if the project is either keeping the code closed source or even worse there is simply no development. No projects are "complete".
• Check Website. If the website is written in bad English the Chinese google translate type it means that they are not serious enough to produce an unbreakable decentralized project. If you can't write English you can't change the world, period. That's a deal breaker.
• Check Team's Linkedin. Numerous projects have either fake Linkedin accounts or the team is comprised mainly by unexperienced employees that are even shown to be working in other companies currently.
• Check backers. Projects that have Binance, Coinbase or Silicon Valley VC funds backing them are way more legit but way more overpriced too!

Relative valuation

One of my favorite ways to value altcoins that is based on the same principle in the stock market is to look at peers and decide what is the maximum cap it can grow to. As an example you take a second layer Ethereum solution that has an ICO and you want to decide if you will enter or not. You can take a look at other coins that are in the same business and compare their market caps. Thinking that your coin will outperform by a lot the top coins currently is overly optimistic so I usually take a lower valuation as a target price. If the initial offering is directly implying a valuation that is more than that then there is no room to grow according to my analysis and I skip it. Many times this has proven me wrong because it's a game theory problem where if many people think irrationally in a market it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But since there is opportunity cost involved, in the long run, getting in initial offerings that have a lot of room to grow will pay off as a strategy.

Sector prospects

In 2017 the sexiest sector was platforms and then coins including privacy ones. Platforms are obviously still a highly rated sector because everything is being built on them, but privacy is not as hot as it used to be. In 2018 DEXes were all they hype but still people are massively using centralized exchanges. In 2020 Defi is the hottest sector and it includes platforms, oracles and Defi projects. What I am saying is that a project gets extra points if it's a Defi one in 2020 and minus points if it's a payment system that will conquer the world as it was in 2017 because that's old news. This is closely related to the next section.

Hype

Needless to say that the crypto market is a worse FOMO type of inexperienced trigger happy yolo investors , much worse than the Robinhood crowd that drove a bankrupt company's stock 1200% after they declared bankruptcy. The result is that there are numerous projects that are basically either vaporware or just so overhyped that their valuation has no connection to reality. Should we avoid those kind of projects? No and I will explain why. There are many very good technically projects that had zero hype potential due to incompetent marketing departments that made them tank. An example (without shilling because I sold out a while back) is Quantum Resistant Ledger. This project has amazing quantum resistant blockchain, the only one running now, has a platform that people can build tokens and messaging systems and other magnificent stuff. Just check how they fared up to now and you will get the point. A project *needs* to have a hype factor because you cannot judge it as normal stocks that you can do value investing like Warren Buffet does where a company will inevitable post sales and profitability numbers and investors will get dividends. Actually the last sentence is the most important: No dividends. Even projects that give you tokens or coins as dividends are not real dividends because if the coin tanks the value of the dividend tanks. This is NOT the case with company stocks where you get dollars even if the company stock tanks. All that being said, I would advice against betting on projects that have a lot of hype but little substance (but that should be obvious!).

How to construct your portfolio

My strategy and philosophy in investing is that risk should be proportional to investment capital. That means that if you are investing 100K in the crypto market your portfolio should be very different than someone investing 1K because 10% annual gains are nothing in the latter while they are very significant in the former. Starting from this principle each individual needs to construct a portfolio according to how much risk he wants to take. I will emphasize two important concepts that play well with what I said. In the first instance of a big portfolio you should concentrate on this mantra: "Diversification is the only free meal in finance". In the case of a small portfolio then this mantra is more important: "Concentrate to create wealth, diversify to maintain wealth". Usually in a big portfolio you would want to hold some big coins such as BTC and ETH to weather the ups and downs explained in previous paragraphs while generating profits and keep progressively smaller parts of your portfolio for riskier investments. Maybe 50% of this portfolio could be big caps and 10% very risky initial offerings. Adapting risk progressively to smaller portfolios makes sense but I think it would be irrational to keep more than 30% of a portfolio no matter what tied to one coin due to the very high risk of bankruptcy.

Conclusion

The altseason is supposedly coming every 3 months. Truth is that nobody can predict it but altcoins can be profitable no matter what. Forget about maximalists who are stuck in their dogmas. Altcoins deliver different value propositions and it makes sense because we are very far from a situation where some project offers everything like Amazon and we wouldn't even want that in the first place since we are talking about decentralization and not a winner takes all and becomes a monster kind of scenario! Some last minute advice:

• Stay out of paid telegram/discord pump groups. They are deadly for your wallet.
• Avoid jumping on overhyped coins that have pumped massively during the last days without any very important news.
• Don't keep coins in obscure exchanges for too long or you will get burned with certainty.
• Stop thinking that your coin will 1000x and overtake Bitcoin!

P.S If you find value in reading this and want more weekly consider subscribing to my newsletter here

Do not use mobile to trade. I will ignore your chat message.

Desktop Users: Comment on this post and Click here to start a trade App Users, please include the following in your PM (Remember to comment on this post as well):

• Type of card(s) and amount of each.
• What payment method you accept.
• How you acquired the GC and why you're getting rid of it.

For Amazon.ca and Amazon.co.uk cards, if you can verify their origins, I will pay the listed price, otherwise it will be 50%.
I have the following crypto ^5: ALGO, BCH, BTC, ETH, LINK, LTC, XLM, and XRP
and payment processors Paypal^1, Skrill^2, Square Cash, and Apple Pay

Want ↓	Cash or a Gift Card ↓	Bitcoin/ethereum/Bitcoin Cash/Litecoin ↓
Amazon.ca	60%	60%
Amazon.co.uk	70%	70%
Amazon.com	75%	70%
Amazon.de	50%	50%
Amazon.es	50%	50%
Amazon.fr	50%	50%
Amazon.it	50%	50%
Arrow Films	65%	60%
Barnes & Noble	50%	50%
Baskin Robbins	60%	60%
Bloomingdales	50%	50%
Clothing Shops (Small Boutique)	contact me	contact me
Dell3	60%	60%
Delta gift cards4	35%	NA
Delta Sky Miles4	PM me	NA
Delta Vouchers4	35%	NA
Disney Plus	PM me	PM me
Dell3	60%	60%
eBay	80%	80%
Gamestop	60%	60%
Gyft	70%	70%
Half Price Books	50%	50%
HBO	70%	70%
iTunes4	40%	NA
J crew	40%	40%
JCPenney	25%	25%
Macys	35%	35%
Magazines.com	40%	40%
Microsoft4	60%	NA
Nordstrom	50%	50%
PSN4	50%	NA
PSN Plus 12 month4	$26	NA
Saks Fifth Avenue	50%	50%
Sears	50%	50%
Sephora	50%	50%
Target	60%	60%
Uber4	50%	NA
Urban Outfitters	50%	50%
Vudu4	50%	NA
Walmart	60%	60%
Xbox (gift cards)4	60%	NA
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (12 month/6 month/3 month/1 month)4	PM me	NA

¹ When paying via PayPal, I can only send payments via Goods and Services, thus you will be charged a fee. If you'd rather not face this fee there are plenty of alternatives. ² Skrill charges an upload fee and transaction fee, both of which will be taken from the payment. ³ Larger denominated gift cards preferred. ⁴ PayPal is the only payment option. ⁵ I can't send less than $10 in crypto per Coinbase's rules.

What I don’t buy:

• Bass Pro Shop
• iTunes from anywhere but the US
• Google Play from anywhere but the US
• Hilton Honors
• Spotify
• Steam
• old navy/gap/banana republic
• Hot Topic
• PSN Canada or UK
• Xbox Canada or UK
• Xbox live gold

I will buy gift cards in almost any denomination, although if you are offering an item worth $100 or more we will need mod approval. I will not trade Bitcoin for cash, or do any other cash for cash trade, as that would violate rule 6, and I don't sell gift cards. This is a buying post, not a selling one. Any fees are built into the price.
Here are my GCX Rep profiles with 943 trades worth more than $61,000:

• #1
• #2
• #3
• #4
• #5
• #6
• #7
• #8
• #9

Important: before you send your codes please make sure your account is secure (if your password is twelve characters or less it's best to assume your account has already been compromised; your password should be eight randomly selected words, see 1 and 2). Scams where compromised accounts are used to leverage reputation to scam an unsuspecting user, used to steal codes during the middle of the trade, and steal unused gift cards the victim was saving for later are increasingly commonplace. If you have any concerns as to your account's security, please reset your password now and force logout of all sessions. Thanks

It is no doubt Grayscale’s booming popularity as a mainstream investment has caused a lot of community hullabaloo lately. As such, I felt it was worth making a FAQ regarding the topic. I’m looking to update this as needed and of course am open to suggestions / adding any questions.
The goal is simply to have a thread we can link to anyone with questions on Grayscale and its products. Instead of explaining the same thing 3 times a day, shoot those posters over to this thread. My hope is that these questions are answered in a fairly simple and easy to understand manner. I think as the sub grows it will be a nice reference point for newcomers.
Disclaimer: I do NOT work for Grayscale and as such am basing all these answers on information that can be found on their website / reports. (Grayscale’s official FAQ can be found here). I also do NOT have a finance degree, I do NOT have a Series 6 / 7 / 140-whatever, and I do NOT work with investment products for my day job. I have an accounting background and work within the finance world so I have the general ‘business’ knowledge to put it all together, but this is all info determined in my best faith effort as a layman. The point being is this --- it is possible I may explain something wrong or missed the technical terms, and if that occurs I am more than happy to update anything that can be proven incorrect
Everything below will be in reference to ETHE but will apply to GBTC as well. If those two segregate in any way, I will note that accordingly.

What is Grayscale? 

Grayscale is the company that created the ETHE product. Their website is https://grayscale.co/

What is ETHE? 

ETHE is essentially a stock that intends to loosely track the price of ETH. It does so by having each ETHE be backed by a specific amount of ETH that is held on chain. Initially, the newly minted ETHE can only be purchased by institutions and accredited investors directly from Grayscale. Once a year has passed (6 months for GBTC) it can then be listed on the OTCQX Best Market exchange for secondary trading. Once listed on OTCQX, anyone investor can purchase at this point. Additional information on ETHE can be found here.

So ETHE is an ETF? 

No. For technical reasons beyond my personal understandings it is not labeled an ETF. I know it all flows back to the “Securities Act Rule 144”, but due to my limited knowledge on SEC regulations I don’t want to misspeak past that. If anyone is more knowledgeable on the subject I am happy to input their answer here.

How long has ETHE existed? 

ETHE was formed 12/14/2017. GBTC was formed 9/25/2013.

How is ETHE created? 

The trust will issue shares to “Authorized Participants” in groups of 100 shares (called baskets). Authorized Participants are the only persons that may place orders to create these baskets and they do it on behalf of the investor.
Source: Creation and Redemption of Shares section on page 39 of the “Grayscale Ethereum Trust Annual Report (2019)” – Located Here
Note – The way their reports word this makes it sound like there is an army of authorizers doing the dirty work, but in reality there is only one Authorized Participant. At this moment the “Genesis” company is the sole Authorized Participant. Genesis is owned by the “Digital Currency Group, Inc.” which is the parent company of Grayscale as well. (And to really go down the rabbit hole it looks like DCG is the parent company of CoinDesk and is “backing 150+ companies across 30 countries, including Coinbase, Ripple, and Chainalysis.”)
Source: Digital Currency Group, Inc. informational section on page 77 of the “Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (BTC) Form 10-K (2019)” – Located Here
Source: Barry E. Silbert informational section on page 75 of the “Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (BTC) Form 10-K (2019)” – Located Here

How does Grayscale acquire the ETH to collateralize the ETHE product? 

An Investor may acquire ETHE by paying in cash or exchanging ETH already owned.

• Cash: The investor pays the subscription amount in cash and the Authorized Participant will use that cash to purchase ETH.
• ETH: The investor transfers the ETH to the Authorized Participant, which will contribute the ETH in-kind to the Trust.

Source: Creation and Redemption of Shares section on page 40 of the “Grayscale Ethereum Trust Annual Report (2019)” – Located Here

Where does Grayscale store their ETH? Does it have a specific wallet address we can follow? 

ETH is stored with Coinbase Custody Trust Company, LLC. I am unaware of any specific address or set of addresses that can be used to verify the ETH is actually there.
As an aside - I would actually love to see if anyone knows more about this as it’s something that’s sort of peaked my interest after being asked about it… I find it doubtful we can find that however.
Source: Part C. Business Information, Item 8, subsection A. on page 16 of the “Grayscale Ethereum Trust Annual Report (2019)” – Located Here

Can ETHE be redeemed for ETH? 

No, currently there is no way to give your shares of ETHE back to Grayscale to receive ETH back. The only method of getting back into ETH would be to sell your ETHE to someone else and then use those proceeds to buy ETH yourself.
Source: Redemption Procedures on page 41 of the “Grayscale Ethereum Trust Annual Report (2019)” – Located Here

Why are they not redeeming shares? 

I think the report summarizes it best:

Redemptions of Shares are currently not permitted and the Trust is unable to redeem Shares. Subject to receipt of regulatory approval from the SEC and approval by the Sponsor in its sole discretion, the Trust may in the future operate a redemption program. Because the Trust does not believe that the SEC would, at this time, entertain an application for the waiver of rules needed in order to operate an ongoing redemption program, the Trust currently has no intention of seeking regulatory approval from the SEC to operate an ongoing redemption program.

Source: Redemption Procedures on page 41 of the “Grayscale Ethereum Trust Annual Report (2019)” – Located Here

What is the fee structure? 

ETHE has an annual fee of 2.5%. GBTC has an annual fee of 2.0%. Fees are paid by selling the underlying ETH / BTC collateralizing the asset.
Source: ETHE’s informational page on Grayscale’s website - Located Here
Source: Description of Trust on page 31 & 32 of the “Grayscale Ethereum Trust Annual Report (2019)” – Located Here

What is the ratio of ETH to ETHE? 

At the time of posting (6/19/2020) each ETHE share is backed by .09391605 ETH. Each share of GBTC is backed by .00096038 BTC.
ETHE & GBTC’s specific information page on Grayscale’s website updates the ratio daily – Located Here
For a full historical look at this ratio, it can be found on the Grayscale home page on the upper right side if you go to Tax Documents > 2019 Tax Documents > Grayscale Ethereum Trust 2019 Tax Letter.

Why is the ratio not 1:1? Why is it always decreasing? 

While I cannot say for certain why the initial distribution was not a 1:1 backing, it is more than likely to keep the price down and allow more investors a chance to purchase ETHE / GBTC.
As noted above, fees are paid by selling off the ETH collateralizing ETHE. So this number will always be trending downward as time goes on.
Source: Description of Trust on page 32 of the “Grayscale Ethereum Trust Annual Report (2019)” – Located Here

I keep hearing about how this is locked supply… explain? 

As noted above, there is currently no redemption program for converting your ETHE back into ETH. This means that once an ETHE is issued, it will remain in circulation until a redemption program is formed --- something that doesn’t seem to be too urgent for the SEC or Grayscale at the moment. Tiny amounts will naturally be removed due to fees, but the bulk of the asset is in there for good.
Knowing that ETHE cannot be taken back and destroyed at this time, the ETH collateralizing it will not be removed from the wallet for the foreseeable future. While it is not fully locked in the sense of say a totally lost key, it is not coming out any time soon.
Per their annual statement:

The Trust’s ETH will be transferred out of the ETH Account only in the following circumstances: (i) transferred to pay the Sponsor’s Fee or any Additional Trust Expenses, (ii) distributed in connection with the redemption of Baskets (subject to the Trust’s obtaining regulatory approval from the SEC to operate an ongoing redemption program and the consent of the Sponsor), (iii) sold on an as-needed basis to pay Additional Trust Expenses or (iv) sold on behalf of the Trust in the event the Trust terminates and liquidates its assets or as otherwise required by law or regulation.

Source: Description of Trust on page 31 of the “Grayscale Ethereum Trust Annual Report (2019)” – Located Here

Grayscale now owns a huge chunk of both ETH and BTC’s supply… should we be worried about manipulation, a sell off to crash the market crash, a staking cartel? 

First, it’s important to remember Grayscale is a lot more akin to an exchange then say an investment firm. Grayscale is working on behalf of its investors to create this product for investor control. Grayscale doesn’t ‘control’ the ETH it holds any more then Coinbase ‘controls’ the ETH in its hot wallet. (Note: There are likely some varying levels of control, but specific to this topic Grayscale cannot simply sell [legally, at least] the ETH by their own decision in the same manner Coinbase wouldn't be able to either.)
That said, there shouldn’t be any worry in the short to medium time-frame. As noted above, Grayscale can’t really remove ETH other than for fees or termination of the product. At 2.5% a year, fees are noise in terms of volume. Grayscale seems to be the fastest growing product in the crypto space at the moment and termination of the product seems unlikely.
IF redemptions were to happen tomorrow, it’s extremely unlikely we would see a mass exodus out of the product to redeem for ETH. And even if there was incentive to get back to ETH, the premium makes it so that it would be much more cost effective to just sell your ETHE on the secondary market and buy ETH yourself. Remember, any redemption is up to the investors and NOT something Grayscale has direct control over.

Yes, but what about [insert criminal act here]… 

Alright, yes. Technically nothing is stopping Grayscale from selling all the ETH / BTC and running off to the Bahamas (Hawaii?). BUT there is no real reason for them to do so. Barry is an extremely public figure and it won’t be easy for him to get away with that. Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust creates SEC reports weekly / bi-weekly and I’m sure given the sentiment towards crypto is being watched carefully. Plus, Grayscale is making tons of consistent revenue and thus has little to no incentive to give that up for a quick buck.

That’s a lot of ‘happy little feels’ Bob, is there even an independent audit or is this Tether 2.0? 

Actually yes, an independent auditor report can be found in their annual reports. It is clearly aimed more towards the financial side and I doubt the auditors are crypto savants, but it is at least one extra set of eyes. Auditors are Friedman LLP – Auditor since 2015.
Source: Independent Auditor Report starting on page 116 (of the PDF itself) of the “Grayscale Ethereum Trust Annual Report (2019)” – Located Here
As mentioned by user TheCrpytosAndBloods (In Comments Below), a fun fact:

The company’s auditors Friedman LLP were also coincidentally TetheBitfinex’s auditors until They controversially parted ways in 2018 when the Tether controversy was at its height. I am not suggesting for one moment that there is anything shady about DCG - I just find it interesting it’s the same auditor.

“Grayscale sounds kind of lame” / “Not your keys not your crypto!” / “Why is anyone buying this, it sounds like a scam?” 

Welp, for starters this honestly is not really a product aimed at the people likely to be reading this post. To each their own, but do remember just because something provides no value to you doesn’t mean it can’t provide value to someone else. That said some of the advertised benefits are as follows:

• Access to trading within a tax advantaged retirement account
• Institutions can easily and safely get exposure to crypto in a more legal-friendly manner
• Ease of use for those who are not very technologically savvy
• Ease of access for someone who doesn’t want to set up a Coinbase account
• Perceived trust in institutional platforms over something like Coinbase or Kraken
• Degen traders who just want access to the volatility ETHE provides that have no interest in crypto beyond that

So for example, I can set up an IRA at a brokerage account that has $0 trading fees. Then I can trade GBTC and ETHE all day without having to worry about tracking my taxes. All with the relative safety something like E-Trade provides over Binance.
As for how it benefits the everyday ETH holder? I think the supply lock is a positive. I also think this product exposes the Ethereum ecosystem to people who otherwise wouldn’t know about it.

Why is there a premium? Why is ETHE’s premium so insanely high compared to GBTC’s premium? 

There are a handful of theories of why a premium exists at all, some even mentioned in the annual report. The short list is as follows:

• ETHE is NOT redeeming shares and as such doesn’t have an effective arbitrage mechanism
• ETHE has a 1 year wait to be sold on the secondary market, again negating the ability to effectively arbitrage the premium
• People may simply be willing to pay a premium for the benefits stated above.

Why is ETHE’s so much higher the GBTC’s? Again, a few thoughts:

• ETHE hasn’t been around as long, so there is less secondary market supply to go around
• ETHE was listed at an insanely high premium to begin with
• ETHE might simply be more popular at the moment
• Could just be sheer stupidity (investors think ETHE is a 1:1 ratio not 1:11)

​

Are there any other differences between ETHE and GBTC? 

I touched on a few of the smaller differences, but one of the more interesting changes is GBTC is now a “SEC reporting company” as of January 2020. Which again goes beyond my scope of knowledge so I won’t comment on it too much… but the net result is GBTC is now putting out weekly / bi-weekly 8-K’s and annual 10-K’s. This means you can track GBTC that much easier at the moment as well as there is an extra layer of validity to the product IMO.

I’m looking for some statistics on ETHE… such as who is buying, how much is bought, etc? 

There is a great Q1 2020 report I recommend you give a read that has a lot of cool graphs and data on the product. It’s a little GBTC centric, but there is some ETHE data as well. It can be found here hidden within the 8-K filings.Q1 2020 is the 4/16/2020 8-K filing.
For those more into a GAAP style report see the 2019 annual 10-K of the same location.

Is Grayscale only just for BTC and ETH? 

No, there are other products as well. In terms of a secondary market product, ETCG is the Ethereum Classic version of ETHE. Fun Fact – ETCG was actually put out to the secondary market first. It also has a 3% fee tied to it where 1% of it goes to some type of ETC development fund.
In terms of institutional and accredited investors, there are a few ‘fan favorites’ such as Bitcoin Cash, Litcoin, Stellar, XRP, and Zcash. Something called Horizion (Backed by ZEN I guess? Idk to be honest what that is…). And a diversified Mutual Fund type fund that has a little bit of all of those. None of these products are available on the secondary market.

Are there alternatives to Grayscale? 

I know they exist, but I don’t follow them. I’ll leave this as a “to be edited” section and will add as others comment on what they know.
Per user Over-analyser (in comments below):

Coinshares (Formerly XBT provider) are the only similar product I know of. BTC, ETH, XRP and LTC as Exchange Traded Notes (ETN).
It looks like they are fully backed with the underlying crypto (no premium).
https://coinshares.com/etps/xbt-provideinvestor-resources/daily-hedging-position
Denominated in SEK and EUR. Certainly available in some UK pensions (SIPP).

As asked by pegcity - Okay so I was under the impression you can just give them your own ETH and get ETHE, but do you get 11 ETHE per ETH or do you get the market value of ETH in USD worth of ETHE? 

I have always understood that the ETHE issued directly through Grayscale is issued without the premium. As in, if I were to trade 1 ETH for ETHE I would get 11, not say only 2 or 3 because the secondary market premium is so high. And if I were paying cash only I would be paying the price to buy 1 ETH to get my 11 ETHE. Per page 39 of their annual statement, it reads as follows:

The Trust will issue Shares to Authorized Participants from time to time, but only in one or more Baskets (with a Basket being a block of 100 Shares). The Trust will not issue fractions of a Basket. The creation (and, should the Trust commence a redemption program, redemption) of Baskets will be made only in exchange for the delivery to the Trust, or the distribution by the Trust, of the number of whole and fractional ETH represented by each Basket being created (or, should the Trust commence a redemption program, redeemed), which is determined by dividing (x) the number of ETH owned by the Trust at 4:00 p.m., New York time, on the trade date of a creation or redemption order, after deducting the number of ETH representing the U.S. dollar value of accrued but unpaid fees and expenses of the Trust (converted using the ETH Index Price at such time, and carried to the eighth decimal place), by (y) the number of Shares outstanding at such time (with the quotient so obtained calculated to one one-hundred-millionth of one ETH (i.e., carried to the eighth decimal place)), and multiplying such quotient by 100 (the “Basket ETH Amount”). All questions as to the calculation of the Basket ETH Amount will be conclusively determined by the Sponsor and will be final and binding on all persons interested in the Trust. The Basket ETH Amount multiplied by the number of Baskets being created or redeemed is the “Total Basket ETH Amount.” The number of ETH represented by a Share will gradually decrease over time as the Trust’s ETH are used to pay the Trust’s expenses. Each Share represented approximately 0.0950 ETH and 0.0974 ETH as of December 31, 2019 and 2018, respectively.

​

So I've seen the rise, fall, and now stabilization of STA and decided to do some research. But why do I want to do research on a shitcoin? Because my hope is, it's not a shitcoin.
What you are doing with statera is buying a "stake" in SNX, Link, BTC, ETH, and STA through an index fund (balancer pool), if BTC moons then the index fund buys more SNX, Link, ETH, BTC, and STA, if STA moons the pool buys more SNX, Link, BTC, and ETH. If Link, ETH, SNX, and BTC all go up then the pool buys more STA forcing STA's price to go up. It's basically a way to gain exposure to all 5 assets simultaneously while balancing your risk. The interesting part is that STA is deflationary, it destroys itself with each transaction (we've already seen supply dwindle by 7 million STA), this reduces supply, increasing demand, increasing price. It's basically a leveraged index fund on BTC, ETH, Link, and SNX all projects I invest directly in and support. If we have a bull cycle STA will moon. (Disclaimer, there is no free lunch, if there is an error in the code or a back door, or if something goes awry with the balancer, this could go down in flames, they are currently auditing the code with a third party which will give us more assurance. It is also decentralized so there is less counter-party risk, as long as that decentralization holds, which the audit will help us understand. Other than a black swan catastrophic failure, this is an incredible investment on paper, if you think the other 4 assets will go up, because them going up forces the buying of STA by the balancer pool, which is basically an altruistic whale that wants STA to be less volatile while trending up in price).
There is a term in investing called accumulation phase, for us in crypto when someone like Grayscale buys 150% of all bitcoins being mined, or buys tens of millions in crypto every week, do you think they just put a market order into Coinbase Pro? No. They could do an Over The Counter (OTC) trade with an individual, they agree on a price, and a large purchase is made individual to individual (but I doubt they continue to find a bunch of bitcoin whales to give them the thousands of bitcoins they want). So what do you do? If you buy thousands of bitcoin the price will unnaturally go up as people spot your demand and inflate the order books to take your money then the price crashes once you, the biggest buyer, is out of the market, leaving you with a heavy bag. So you enter an accumulation phase, a simplified example:
Your target to buy a stock is $5-$10, you are happy buying at any price in that range. The price is at $8, so you put in a few orders and a few more 10 shares at a time so no one sees you as a whale, the prices starts going up, you have now purchased 1,000 shares and the price is $9.99, so you sell 800 shares all in one big order, everyone freaks out seeing this "huge" (huge in our example) order from presumably a whale who is spooked by market sentiment, price crashes to $6. You start buying again $20 at a time, and build your stack back up to 1,500 shares, the price has hit $8.99 and just to throw the market off (doing it again at $9.99 would be too obvious) you sell 1,000 shares. Rinse repeat. You have now bought 500 shares at the price you want where as, if you had bought 500 shares all at once, the price would have sky rocketed to $20 and then fell back to earth (say back down to $10) and you'd be holding shares at a 100% premium. This is highly simplified but hopefully gives you an idea of how accumulation works and maybe even makes you wonder if bitcoin is not going through this exact thing as we speak.
But on to Statera, so I decided to look at the whales in this space, you can check my work,go to the contract addressthen click on "holders" the list is constantly changing, addresses 10 and 11 leapfrogged address 9 and are now 9 and 10 respectively. I put the first four digits of the address so you can specifically check my work. I would say what I found is highly bullish (but make your own conjectures). First off the spread of addresses is HEALTHY, the biggest whales (top 50 address) all hold .5-2% of the supply each. The biggest holder (the developer) holds 4.6% of supply (the best I can tell you can mask your holdings and shuffle them all over so it's nearly impossible to really tell). Also there are only 1,700 people in the coin, we are still VERY early, this is more than a 50% increase in a week. Lastly the balancer pool (which balances the index) has over $350,000 in it up over 50% in the last week, this is arguably the most important metric, the liquidity here is what allows the balancing to happen and the STA price to be forced to go up, this is a huge amount of liquidity for something only held by 1,700 people, it's actually quadruple the liquidity of the trading pairs on Uniswap! Long story short the balancer pool is armed and ready to balance and support STA.
So there is no one holding 90% of supply (that we can tell) who is waiting to dump on you, we're in the early stages and seeing a lot of health in the token, and there is a lot of liquidity here. Now, the top 13 addresses:
1 (0x43) Dev Account started with all 101,000,000 then started pushing out to exchanges and balancer pool, sent 50 million right off the bat to 0x0e (balancer pool or uniswap) fun account to look at you kind of get to see the genesis of the coin.
2 (0x28) "Bought" a ton to start, hodler (weirdly sold a VERY small amount, around 10,000 of his over two million). I put bought in quotes because this account got it's STA from 0x6a, which is also where account 11 got it's from, 0x6a seems like an exchange account that people are buying from, but I would love for someone to confirm what 06xa is, balancer pool related, exchange related, developer related?)
3 (0x92) Hodler straight up, not a move, though the dump on this account came from another account that is now zero, could be a similar situation to address 6 where it is a "cold storage" for someone trading with other accounts
4 (0x13) PLAYING the exact game I showed above sell buy sell buy repeat (buys are bigger than sells)
5 (0xC2) Bought big, trickle sold, bought big, currently trickle selling (possibly PLAYING the game)
6 (0xD7) interesting one, bought 1.9 million STA for 1,354 digital Rand (What a deal!) then transferred all their STA from one account (0x67 currently no STA) to this account, now semi holding, small sells, sold 40,000 in all of 1.7 million. Not sure why he transferred could be intentional to mask moves, could be moving to hardware wallet, could be moving to exchange, unknown. Seems like a HODLER.
7 (0x7c) PLAYING THE EXACT GAME...
8 (0x0e) Contract (looks like balancer pool related)
9 (0x59) Contract (looks like balancer pool related)
10 (0xd8) PLAYING THE GAME
11 (0xb0) got a large dump from 0xc69 and is now holding (which now has 0) and if you keep tracing it back and back you get to the first account in the chain (0x6a, which also funded 0x28, which now has 615,000, and is either interacting with the balancer or trading, again please someone explain I can't), this could be a whale splitting his buckets or two large individuals who did an OTC trade, but more likely it's one person who is doing a lot of trading and accumulating. I would put PLAYING THE GAME, as the other accounts it came from are accumulating, but not completely clear. It seems like she may be using this as a "cold address" to hodl and then trading with her other account
12 (0x18db) Hodl. Accumulated hard from Uniswap buy buy buy 15, 12, and 6 days ago, hasn't moved since.
13 (0x6c) PLAYING THE GAME
So are we in a whale accumulation phase? Hard to tell, the top 10 addresses (minus 3 for the two contracts and dev) are definitely acting bullish even if they are not accumulating, it seems like 6 of the 10 are in some form of an accumulation phase and the other 4 are hodling. I do see STA as a long term hold, again it's an index fund on four of the biggest names in crypto. This will be a popular investment (if it remains legit, so far it has been highly legit). That being said, this is just 10 addresses, I don't want to spend my whole Saturday on this, if anyone wants to look at the top 50 addresses, please do! I will read and upvote your post. It was reassuring to me at least to see the top addresses are acting like bullish investors. Is the whole STA trader base in accumulation or is this an anomaly? I don't know, you can be the judge or dig deeper yourself.
The best part of this sideways action and the buying and selling of STA in the 4-6 cent range is that every trade burns coin, deflating supply, and making any later bull run even bigger. That's the genius of the coin, with every trade, with everyday, it inherently becomes more valuable (unless Link, ETH, SNX, and BTC all shit the bed, then game over, but that would be game over no matter what game you're playing).
DYOR, don't put in more than you are willing to lose, but as for me, I'm going to be following what the whales are doing and slowly accumulating in this band (4-6 cents seems like a strong buy point, 2-3 cents is an amazing buy point but it rarely dips down that low).