The private firm Bitcoin Investment Trust (BIT) began trading on the over-the-counter "pink sheet" market OTCMarket under the symbol "GBTC" yesterday.1 The Trust, backed by Grayscale Investments, a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, was founded by Barry Silbert and, according to AngelList, employs Ryan Selkis a.k.a. TwoBitIdiot.
Prices for the new offering are already soaring in early trading, with shares fetching upwards of $55.00 at 9:49am EST on Tuesday. Seven hundred and sixty five shares were traded on opening day, May 4th, 2015, with prices ranging from $37.98 – 42.00 for approximately 0.1 BTC. It's not clear what the margin for error is on this approximation at the time of publishing.
Of potential interest to potential investors is that BIT has 1,394,600 outstanding shares as of April 30, 2015. Also, the Trust reported losing $41.84 mn in 2014 and claimed $42.80 mn in net tangible assets at that time.
This ticker symbol is contrary to earlier reports suggesting the Trust would list under "BTCV". ↩
Each share is 0.1 BTC minus various fees and expenses discounted by Greyscale when the shares are issued and/or redeemed for BTC.