Public companies hold almost $7B in Bitcoin in heads-up to Grayscale

Bitcoin holdings at public companies topped $6.8 billion this year as newcomers catch up with industry heavyweight Grayscale.

According to monitoring resource Coin98 Analytics, a total of 13 public companies have now invested in Bitcoin.

Putting Grayscale's "Sun" in the shade.

Asset management giant Grayscale remains the largest BTC player with 449,596 BTC under its control, followed by CoinShares' 69,730 BTC. MicroStrategy, the firm which made waves when it announced it had moved to adopt a "Bitcoin Standard," has 38,250 BTC. In fourth place is Mike Novogratz's Galaxy Digital, which controls 16,551 BTC. In total, the 13 companies have almost 600,000 BTC locked up, a number which is increasing with Grayscale thus far remaining in the lead.Public companies' Bitcoin holdings.

"Grayscale is the sun," its confident CEO Barry Silbert commented on Coin98 Analytics' numbers.

For all Silbert's publicity activities it is MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor who has arguably made the biggest impression in cryptocurrency this year.

Saylor began giving regular interviews on Bitcoin's supremacy over fiat currency and continues to be highly active on social media with the same message.

If that's not intrinsically valuable, what is?".

The past month meanwhile has seen Bitcoin diverge from both U.S. dollar strength and VIX volatility, providing new opportunities for investors keen to diversify.

This has in turn boosted existing anticipation of a clean divergence away from traditional markets - a "Decoupling" for Bitcoin paves the way for significant price gains, analysts argue.