Asset Manager Grayscale Introduces Crypto Fund for MakerDAO’s MKR

Grayscale, the asset manager company behind bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) exchange traded-funds (ETFs) and other crypto investment funds, introduced Tuesday a new fund that invests in the governance token of decentralized lending platform MakerDAO (MKR).
MKR advanced over 5% in an hour following the news, hitting $2,100. The token is up nearly 8% over the past 24 hours, outperforming the mostly flat broad-market CoinDesk 20 Index.
The Grayscale MakerDAO Trust is accessible to eligible individual and institutional accredited investors, and has the same structure as the firm’s other single-asset trusts, according to a press release. This means that it’s a closed-end fund where direct withdrawals are not possible, which could lead to price deviations between the fund’s share on secondary markets and the underlying asset.
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Maker is one of the largest protocols in the decentralized finance (DeFi) led by a community of token holders, or decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). Those who hold MKR tokens can participate in decision-making and vote on proposals. The protocol manages over $7 billion of crypto and real-world assets (RWA) including U.S. Treasuries and issues the third largest stablecoin on the market, the $5 billion DAI.
The protocol is currently undergoing a major revamp called “End Game” coined by founder Rune Christensen, which includes the issuance of upgraded versions of MKR and DAI.
Read more: Rune Christensen Explains Why He Wants to Remake Maker and Kill DAI
The offering follows Grayscale’s newly launched single-asset funds for decentralized artificial intelligence (AI) project Bittensor’s {{TAO}} token and layer-1 blockchain Sui (SUI) last week. The company also opened a decentralized AI-focused fund that invests in a basket of cryptocurrencies including near (NEAR), render (RNDR) and filecoin (FIL), nearly a month ago.
UPDATE (Aug. 13, 14:00 UTC time): Adds MKR price action following the announcement.
Edited by Aoyon Ashraf.
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Krisztian Sandor is a reporter on the U.S. markets team focusing on stablecoins and institutional investment. He holds BTC and ETH.