Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin Cryptocurrencies To Trade At The Stock Market As Grayscale Wins FINRA Approval

Grayscale Investments, a company that manages cryptocurrency funds, announced Monday that shares of its Bitcoin Cash trust and Litecoin Trust have been approved for public listing by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

What Happened

The listings will represent the two cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC), which have market capitalizations of $4.2 billion and $2.8 billion, respectively. 

Bitcoin Cash or BCash was created as a hard fork to the world's apex cryptocurrency in 2017.

Former Alphabet Inc. GOOGL GOOG employee Charlie Lee created Litecoin as a Bitcoin-spinoff in October 2011, with the intention to make cryptocurrency transactions faster.

This would be the first time ever that publicly listed securities have ever derived their value from these cryptocurrencies.

The Bitcoin Cash trust will trade under the symbol BCHG and the Litcoin Trust under LTCN on the otc markets.

Grayscale’s offerings will allow institutional investors access to these cryptocurrencies, who have concerns about purchasing such assets directly, Fortune noted. The shares will reportedly trade at a premium to the price of their underlying crypto assets.

Why It Matters

Greyscale Bitcoin Trust GBTC shares are said to be one of the top five equities held by millennials even ahead of shares of Netflix Inc, NFLX according to Fortune.

The company has six such offerings, including Greyscale Ethereum Trust ETHE and Greyscale Ethereum Classic Trust ETCG.

Greyscale’s shares trade on the OTCQX, which is overseen by FINRA and does not require registration with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. 

Price Action

Bitcoin Cash traded nearly 0.2% lower at $169.67 at press time on Tuesday, according to CoinMarketCap data. Litecoin traded about 0.4% lower at $42.35.