Grayscale considers VeChain and Iota as Coinbase lists 4 low-cap coins

Published at: Jan. 26, 2022

Grayscale, the world’s largest crypto asset manager, has added 25 coins to the list of assets it is considering adding to its investment products including VeChain, Iota, Monero and Axie Infinity.

Other assets are consideration are: Algorand (ALGO), Arweave (AR), Bancor (BNT), BitTorrent (BTT), BORA (BORA), Convex (CVX), Cosmos (ATOM), Decred (DCR), Elrond (EGLD), Enjin (ENJ), Fantom (FTM), Gala (GALA), Gelato (GEL), Helium (HNT), Holo (HOT), Oasis Network (ROSE), Secret (SCRT), Spell (SPELL), Stacks (STX), The Sandbox (SAND), Universal Market Access (UMA), and Yield Guild Games (YGG).

In addition to the 25 coins added to its assets under consideration, Grayscale also said in a Jan. 24 update on its website that it had added Amp (AMP) to its Grayscale DeFi Fund.

We’ve updated our list of digital assets under consideration for 2022. See what's new, and learn more about what this means: https://t.co/GahLhJUgwk$ALGO $AR $ATOM $AXS $BORA $BTT $CVX $DCR $EGLD $ENJ $FTM $GALA $GEL $HNT $HOT $IOTA $ROSE $SCRT $SAND $SPELL $STX $VET $YGG

— Grayscale (@Grayscale) January 24, 2022

Grayscale’s current lineup of 15 crypto investment products has $55 billion in assets under management (AUM). The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust and Grayscale Ethereum Trust account for $31.2 billion of the AUM.

The Grayscale DeFi Fund currently has $7 million AUM and is down 35.8% since its inception in July 2021, according to data from Grayscale’s website.

Many of the coins now being considered are among the top 100 coins by market cap according to CoinGecko.

VeChain (VET) was originally launched as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum network in 2015, but has since become the native token on the VeChainThor blockchain network. The token and the network is used by real-world industries for supply chain tracking and management.

Iota (IOTA) is the native token for the Iota distributed ledger which helps devices connect to the Internet of Things (IoT). The project was founded in late 2015.

Axie Infinity (AXS) is the governance token for the play-to-earn Axie Infinity game that has seen huge success in the past year. It traded for $0.97 with a $48 million market cap on Jan. 26 2021, and is now trading at $51.90 with a market cap of $3.6 billion.

While these three tokens are well known and have amassed large followings the same is not necessarily true for the tokens Coinbase has just added.

Coinbase is the third largest crypto exchange in the world with nearly $4 billion in daily trading volume and it listed four relatively unknown tokens today. The four coins are Cryptex (CTX), DIA (DIA), Maple (MPL), and Unifi Procol DAO (UNFI). None of these tokens currently crack the top 500 by market capitalization but by listing them Coinbase is staying true to its word to “make a lot more coins and tokens available in 2022” according to a Jan. 25 tweet.

The Cryptex team spoke with Cointelegraph today about their goals moving forward from the Coinbase listing. When asked how a small crypto project can benefit from such a listing, co-founder and CEO Joe Sticco said:

“It allows us to remain nimble and community driven, (at) the same time we can now reach all corners of the globe.”

Cryptex is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that manages the TCAP Index, which tracks the total crypto market capitalization. CTX is up 10.7% in the past 24 hours trading at $10.79.

Sticco also addressed what it would take for a small project to rise to the point where it would be considered by Grayscale for an investment product. He said,

“I think at the end of the day it’s not so much about where we all start… It’s about starting small and working to solve problems that are incredibly hard to make the future of finance the best it can be for all participants.”