(Kitco News) - Grayscale Investments, the cryptocurrency investment firm responsible for the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), has announced a shakeup to its governing board as Barry Silbert, the founder and CEO of Digital Currency Group (DCG) – the parent company of Grayscale – has stepped down from his position on the board of directors.
According to an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission submitted on Tuesday, Silbert and DCG president Mark Murphy have resigned from the Grayscale board, effective Jan. 1, 2024.
Filling the voids left by Silbert and Murphy will be Mark Shifke, chief financial officer of DCG, Matthew Kummell, senior vice president of operations at DCG, and Edward McGee, who serves on the audit committee for Grayscale Investments.
“Effective January 1, 2024, the board consists of Mr. Shifke, Mr. Kummell, Michael Sonnenshein, and Mr. McGee, who also retain the authority granted to them as officers under the limited liability company agreement of the sponsor,” the filing said.
This board shakeup comes as Grayscale Investments is locked in a legal battle over its application to convert GBTC into a spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF). In August, the courts sided with Grayscale and ordered the SEC to review their application again after the regulator initially denied it.
Some analysts in the community have linked the resignations to a possible approval of Grayscale’s spot Bitcoin ETF application.
“I have no info beyond this article but my gut tells me this is Grayscale trying to show SEC it is being a good boy and worthy of making [the] first tranche of launches,” said Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. He said it was “possible this is part of the SEC deal to go out first,” but “thinks this is best behavior type stuff.”
A total of 14 asset managers have spot BTC ETF applications filed with the SEC, which has been meeting with the various filers in recent weeks as the final deadline of Jan. 10 for the ARK 21Shares ETF application is fast approaching.
Shifke, who will become the new Chair of the board, is a financial expert with “nearly four decades of financial and fintech experience, and more than eight years of CFO experience leading two publicly traded companies,” the filing said. He previously led teams at JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, “specializing in M&A Structuring and Advisory, as well as Tax Asset Investments,” and also served as the Head of International Structured Finance Group at the “Big Four” accounting firm KPMG.
