Author: Frank, PANews
In 2025, Grayscale's pace of launching new products has clearly accelerated, and the types of these products are no longer mainly concentrated on single cryptocurrency trusts but have created a structural matrix with four types of products: ETFs, publicly traded funds, private funds, and active strategies. As the category that best represents Grayscale's exploration of cryptocurrency market targets, single cryptocurrency trusts among private placements remain worthy of market attention. PANews revisits this to see if the 'Grayscale effect' still exists or if it can provide us with new insights. (Related reading: Review of 21 Grayscale cryptocurrency trust funds: some up 10 times, some on a bearish path—could it be a counterindicator at the end of the bull market?)
The price cycle selected for this investigation is from the closing price on April 9, 2025 (the market correction low) to the closing price on August 13, 2025 (the recent market high).
2025 Grayscale Vision: Deepening AI, Sui Ecosystem, and Meme Culture
As of August 2025, Grayscale has launched 6 new single-asset cryptocurrency trust products, involving the following crypto assets: Dogecoin (DOGE), Pyth Network (PYTH), Space and Time (SXT), Story Protocol (IP), DeepBook (DEEP), and Walrus (WAL).
From a narrative structure perspective, Grayscale's main market narratives this year focus on AI, DeFi, and Sui. In the AI field, Space and Time (SXT) and Story Protocol (IP) are two infrastructure layer products related to AI. In terms of ecology, Grayscale seems to be focusing on the Sui ecosystem this year, having not only launched a private trust for SUI tokens last August but also quickly introducing two major Sui ecosystem trust products, DeepBook (DEEP) and Walrus (WAL), this August. Additionally, it is worth mentioning that Dogecoin (DOGE), as Grayscale's first MEME-themed trust product, will also be listed in 2025.
In terms of market performance, the projects launched in 2025 are not particularly impressive. In terms of price performance, the average increase of these tokens during this period is about 70%. Although they outperformed BTC, they still lag behind the products launched by Grayscale in other years. This may be because the products launched this year do not belong to market leaders or top-tier assets, but rather represent Grayscale's layout in certain potential sectors.
Of course, this change in selection also indicates that Grayscale's trust products are no longer solely focused on pursuing the hottest projects in the market as 'indicators' but are also beginning to transform into a reservoir for discovering potential.
In terms of asset management scale, the average asset management scale of several single-asset trusts launched in 2025 is approximately $16.73 million, far below the overall average (around $32 million). This is partly because these products have been launched for a short time, and partly due to the market's recognition of these emerging assets still being relatively low.
'Grayscale selection' still outperforms the market
Recently, the overall market performance of Grayscale's trust products has shown polarization. The best-performing and most mediocre projects both come from the Sui ecosystem, with DeepBook increasing by 264.58% and Walrus increasing by 6.89% respectively. Among the 27 trust funds analyzed, 8 projects experienced gains exceeding 100%, and 16 projects saw increases over 50%, with an average gain across all projects reaching 75.47%. In comparison, BTC's increase during the same period was about 56.5%, indicating that Grayscale's chosen targets are significantly superior. Compared to the average of all tokens (in the same period, Binance spot trading pairs), which had an average increase of about 59.8%, there is also a clear advantage.
From this perspective, although the 'Grayscale effect' is no longer present, the selected targets for Grayscale's cryptocurrency trusts seem to still play a role as 'Grayscale selection'.
From a year-on-year perspective, the strongest performing year group is the products launched in 2024, with an average increase of 89.22%. AAVE, AVAX, LDO, and other DeFi and L1 leaders performed excellently during this period, representing the core driving force of the current cycle. Following that are the products from 2018, with an average increase of approximately 81.98%, primarily driven by the excellent performance of established public chains like BCH, LTC, and XLM during this rebound. The performance of 2017 was the worst, with only one Zcash product launched that year (excluding BTC and ETH), which had a mere 12.89% increase.
From the perspective of internal performance by category, the DeFi and public chain assets selected by Grayscale have outperformed the overall market level. Among them, DeFi assets performed best, with an average increase of 122%, mainly due to AAVE, LINK, LDO, and other DeFi core infrastructures leading the upward trend during the market recovery.
The performance of public chains also looks decent, but there is significant differentiation in this area. High-growth ecosystems like AVAX, SUI, and SOL have performed excellently, while others like ZEN and OP are relatively mild, showing that the market's choice for public chains is becoming increasingly selective.
Additionally, AI, as one of Grayscale's current key focus areas, has an average increase of about 56%. Although it doesn't reach the higher popularity of DeFi and public chain projects, it still shows an overall increase of over 50%.
From 'market driver' to 'potential explorer'
In the face of intense competition in the post-ETF era and an increasingly mature market environment, Grayscale Investments seems to be undergoing changes. Its product philosophy and market positioning have gradually shifted from being a 'market driver' to a 'potential indicator'.
Before 2021, due to the extreme scarcity of compliant investment channels, the 'Grayscale effect' was a powerful 'booster' in the market. Any asset included in the Grayscale trust equated to obtaining a unique ticket to mainstream visibility, triggering almost certain price increases. At that time, Grayscale was an important introducer of market liquidity.
By 2025, with the proliferation of various ETFs and compliant products, market channels have greatly expanded. Grayscale's role has shifted to that of a 'potential indicator'. Its selections are no longer sufficient conditions for price rises, but the direction of its choices is more inclined towards finding the next success story in a specific sector or ecosystem.
The deep layout in the Sui ecosystem and Pyth may explain this change. Grayscale is no longer satisfied with just providing exposure to SUI tokens but is delving into its ecosystem while launching trust products for the core DeFi protocol DeepBook and the decentralized storage project Walrus. This signals a 'sinking' trend, shifting from macro investment narratives in public chains to micro-investment strategies that can directly benefit from ecological prosperity. Additionally, the investment in Pyth is also aimed at finding the optimal potential on the hottest public chain, Solana, to become the next AAVE or Chainlink.
In addition to exploring single-asset trust products, Grayscale is also simultaneously developing portfolio trusts and diversified ETF/ETP products. In 2025, besides launching several single cryptocurrency asset trust products, more product types such as Bitcoin miner ETF (MNRS), Bitcoin adopter ETF (BCOR), and a series of option-based ETFs are on the horizon.
Notably, Grayscale has recently launched the Grayscale Dynamic Income Fund (GDIF), a product specifically investing in staking yields from proof-of-stake (PoS) networks. This indicates that as the market matures, speculative trading is gradually retreating, and the 'real yield' from protocol income (such as trading fees and staking rewards) is actually a more stable method that aligns with traditional institutional investors' preferences.
In summary, Grayscale's performance of investment targets and the shift in its investment strategy may bring us the following two considerations.
1. The 'Grayscale effect' may no longer exist, but 'Grayscale selection' still holds value. The launch of a trust fund for a specific cryptocurrency by Grayscale no longer significantly stimulates the market, but in the long run, Grayscale's chosen targets are generally still worthy of being considered as research subjects.
2. Infrastructure first; Grayscale's layout repeatedly confirms a simple investment principle—selling 'pickaxes and shovels' in any emerging gold rush business has the highest certainty. Whether it's oracles, DeFi liquidity layers, or data warehouses, investing in core infrastructures that power the entire ecosystem is key to weathering cycles.
3. Traditional capital's enthusiasm for the crypto market is not just about pursuing high returns from a specific asset but leans more towards laying out across the entire crypto supply chain and engaging in multi-asset mixed investments to balance risks.
The above points may be the insights Grayscale, the 'crypto veteran', offers us.
