Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC) Stock Analysis
Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF
▾ What's in the 32/100 risk score? (higher = riskier)
Contributions (weight × component score) sum to the total. This near-term score now includes fundamental health (leverage, FCF trend). See the Financial Health section for the full balance-sheet read.
How to read GBTC (Bitcoin fund)
GBTC holds Bitcoin on your behalf — it is not a business, so there are no cash flows to value. Its price tracks Bitcoin. What matters is your view on Bitcoin, the fund's fee, and how close the price trades to the value of the coins it holds.
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Why normal valuation doesn't apply ↓
Bitcoin has no earnings or cash flow — a DCF, P/E or book-value model tells you nothing here. Your return is ~100% the coin's price.
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Anatomy of a share ↓
What one share actually represents in terms of the fund's holdings.
Standard DCF doesn't fit GBTC well — but that's expected for this kind of business. The Bank / Insurance Valuation Lens below uses the metrics actually used by analysts who value investment banking. Reverse DCF + Football Field also work as cross-checks.
How to value GBTC
Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF isn't a business — it's a fund that holds Bitcoin on your behalf. There are no revenues, earnings, or cash flows to discount, so a DCF, P/E, or book-value model tells you nothing. Each share represents a fixed slice of the fund's Bitcoin, so the price simply tracks the price of Bitcoin (minus a small annual fee). An intrinsic-value "verdict" would be meaningless here, so we don't show one.
- Your view on Bitcoin — that's ~100% of the return. This page can't tell you whether Bitcoin itself is cheap or expensive.
- Expense ratio — the annual fee skims your holding every year. Spot Bitcoin funds range from ~0.12% to ~1.5%; for a long hold, lower is better.
- Premium / discount to NAV — aim to pay close to the value of the coins the fund holds, not a markup over them.
- Structure & custody — a modern spot ETF vs an older trust, and who actually custodies the coins.
Crypto is highly volatile and speculative. Educational only — not investment advice.
How does GBTC stack up against its closest peers?
We take the 8 same-industry companies most similar to GBTC (similar size) and check what investors are paying for each dollar of their revenue (or profits). If GBTC is much more expensive on the same yardstick, that's a red flag — unless you have a specific reason it deserves a premium. For a leveraged business, FCF yield (in the table) is usually more reliable than EV/Sales, because revenue multiples ignore differences in margins and debt.
▾ What's "EV / Sales" in plain English?
EV (Enterprise Value) = market cap + total debt − cash. It's "what you'd pay to buy the entire company outright" — you pay the market cap to shareholders and take over their debt, but you keep their cash. EV is fairer than market cap alone because it includes the debt the new owner inherits.
EV / Sales = EV ÷ annual revenue. So "2.5×" means investors pay $2.50 of enterprise value per $1 of yearly sales. Higher = market is paying more per dollar of sales (usually because they expect future growth or fat margins).
p25 / median / p75 are the 25th, 50th (middle), and 75th percentile of the peers' multiples. Half the peers fall between p25 and p75. The median (p50) is the typical peer — that's the benchmark we compare to.
Bold middle number = median peer. Half the peers trade above it, half below. Computed over 8 same-industry peers; implausible multiples excluded.
⚠️ Important caveat: peer multiples only work if the peers are genuinely comparable. Always check the peer list below — if the auto-picker grabbed micro-caps or unrelated businesses, the comparison is noise. A medical-device giant priced against tiny biotech startups won't produce a useful signal.
▾ View peer list (8)
| Ticker | Company | Industry | Mcap | EV/EBIT | FCF Yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UCO | ProShares Trust II | Investment Banking | $10.5B | — | 16.3% |
| UGL | ProShares Trust II | Investment Banking | $13.2B | — | 13.0% |
| FBTC | Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund | Investment Banking | $13.6B | — | — |
| PSLV | Sprott Physical Silver Trust | Investment Banking | $14.8B | — | — |
| ZSL | ProShares Trust II | Investment Banking | $8.7B | — | 19.7% |
| EUO | ProShares Trust II | Investment Banking | $8.6B | — | 19.8% |
| YCS | ProShares Trust II | Investment Banking | $15.8B | — | 10.8% |
| SVXY | ProShares Trust II | Investment Banking | $16.3B | — | 10.5% |
Quality & solvency checks
Cheap stocks can be cheap for a reason. These screens warn when a low valuation comes paired with structural fragility.
Why it matters: Cheap-looking stocks (low P/E or P/B) often have low Z-scores because the market knows the company is dying. Z-score warns you before you fall into a value trap.
Reference: > 3.0 = safe zone · 1.81–3.0 = grey zone · < 1.81 = distress zone
Full explanation →
Altman Z was calibrated on industrial firms and doesn't apply to banks or insurers — their balance sheets are dominated by loans/securities, not working capital. See the Bank Valuation Lens above for P/B, ROE and ROA — the metrics regulators and analysts actually use to assess bank solvency.
Why it matters: High score = fundamentals improving. Low score = deteriorating. Especially powerful for filtering cheap stocks: cheap + high F-score historically outperforms; cheap + low F-score is often a value trap.
Reference: 7–9 = strong · 4–6 = mediocre · 0–3 = weak
Full explanation →
Piotroski F was built for non-financial firms (gross margin, asset turnover, current ratio all assume an industrial cost structure). For banks, the equivalent quality signals are efficiency ratio, net interest margin, and provision coverage — see the Bank Valuation Lens above.
A standard discounted cash flowDCF — Discounted Cash Flow — sums up all future cash a business will produce, adjusted for the fact that future dollars are worth less than dollars today.
Why it matters: It is the most fundamentally honest valuation method when applicable — but only works for companies with predictable, positive cash flow.
Reference: Best for: mature, profitable businesses. Fails for: pre-profit growth, banks, REITs.
Full explanation → valuation is not meaningful for GBTC because it is structured as a trust holding Bitcoin, not an operating company with traditional cash flows. The model indicates negative equity value, suggesting its valuation is speculative and low-confidence. Investors are likely focused on the underlying asset's price movements and the trust's ability to track it, rather than traditional earnings. The #1 quantifiable risk is the highly volatile price of Bitcoin itself.
As of 3 months ago
Anatomy of a share
What you're buying per share. Bars are at the same scale so you can see the relative size of revenue, costs, cash flow, and debt — not just read them in a table.
What's free cash flow / what do these mean?
Revenue per share — how much the business earns from customers, divided by the number of shares outstanding. Top of the income statement.
Earnings per share — profit left after operating costs, interest, and taxes, per share. Two versions appear on this page and are not interchangeable: GAAP diluted EPS uses the company's weighted-average diluted share count during the reporting period (this is the "earnings" in "price-to-earnings"); net income per current share divides annual net income by today's share count. They differ whenever the share count has changed.
Owner-earnings free cash flow per share — the cash the business produces for shareholders. Savng's owner-earnings FCF subtracts capital expenditures and stock-based compensation from operating cash flow (SBC is a real dilution cost even though it's non-cash). This is deliberately more conservative than "standard" FCF, which subtracts only capital expenditures — so our figure is lower than the headline FCF you'll see elsewhere. FCF funds dividends, buybacks, debt repayment, and acquisitions; a company can report positive earnings yet negative FCF.
Debt per share — total interest-bearing borrowings divided by shares. High debt-per-share next to thin FCF-per-share is a fragility signal.
What you actually need to decide
Every stock price is a disagreement. Here's the single thing that must go right for the bulls, the single thing that breaks the thesis, and the concrete signposts to watch so you can update your view as real results arrive.
- SEC decisions regarding spot Bitcoin ETFs
- Bitcoin price movements
- Changes in GBTC's premium/discount to NAV
The trend, in plain numbers (FY2024 → FY2025, latest reported)
Straight from the financial statements — no model, no opinion. For a small or unprofitable company, the direction of these numbers usually tells you more than any single valuation.
- Free cash flow fell to $3.70B.
- Swung to a loss of -$993.5M (from a profit the prior year).
Nothing was clearly improving year-over-year.
Management & Leadership
Grayscale Investments, a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, manages GBTC. Michael Sonnenshein serves as the CEO of Grayscale Investments, overseeing the trust's operations and strategic direction. Barry Silbert is the founder and CEO of Digital Currency Group.
What They Make
GBTC is an investment vehicle that holds Bitcoin, allowing investors to gain exposure to the cryptocurrency without directly buying, storing, or safekeeping it. It primarily serves institutional and accredited investors, as well as retail investors through brokerage accounts.
End Markets
Revenue Drivers
Why Is It Priced Like This?
Why Customers Pay
What we use instead: earnings (P/E, EV/EBIT), book value & return on equity (P/TBV + ROE — how banks are actually judged) — computed from the figures this company does report, shown in the sections below. Those numbers are unaffected by the missing cash-flow data.
The market prices GBTC based on the underlying value of Bitcoin and the trust's ability to convert to an ETF, rather than its operational cash flows, which are positive but not the primary driver. The 'Franchise/durability score 0/5' indicates a lack of traditional competitive moats, making its valuation highly dependent on external market factors and investor sentiment towards digital assets.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
As an investment trust, GBTC primarily generates revenue from management fees and does not typically issue dividends or engage in buybacks; it funds its operations through these fees.
Residual Income
Balance-sheet financial (Investment Banking): residual income model - book value is meaningful anchor.
Show advanced inputs
| Sector Default | 8.0% |
What this model does NOT do: this is a consolidated owner-earnings FCF model. Standalone segment assumptions: none. It does not project net interest income and fee-income lines independently; their combined effect is embedded in the historical revenue and cash-flow trend the model extrapolates. The calculator above can only approximate a segment's impact through the single consolidated growth rate — it cannot model any one line separately. For a true segment-level view, build a separate model from the company's segment disclosures.
Maturity & Competitive Position
Moat Signals
Net income was negative latest, though operating cash flow has been positive for 2/2 years.
Geography & Markets
Grayscale Investments is headquartered in the United States and primarily serves investors within the US market. Specific geographic revenue mix is not available, but its operations are focused on the North American financial landscape.
Geographic Risks
Market Signals
These are timing signals, not value signals — they describe the stock's recent price behavior, not what the business is worth. Use them for the "the thesis looks good, but is now the moment?" question. Each tile below explains what it's saying.
Why it matters: Short-term contrarian indicator. Extreme readings often precede mean reversion, though not always.
Reference: 30–70 normal · >70 overbought · <30 oversold
Full explanation → (14)38.5NeutralMomentum is balanced — neither overbought nor oversold.
Why it matters: When the fast line crosses above the slow line, short-term momentum is turning up; below, turning down. A timing cue, not a value signal.
Reference: Line above signal = bullish momentum · below = bearish
Full explanation →BearishLine below signalThe fast trend is below the slow trend — short-term momentum is currently downward.
Technicals describe price, not the business. A great company can have a "bearish" tape (a buying chance) and a weak one a "bullish" tape (a trap). Pair these with the valuation and health sections above.
QUALITY
Data Quality & Risk Flags (5 notes — click to expand/collapse)
Guardrail Notes (5)
- Financial sector: using residual income model. IV = Book Value + PV(excess earnings).
- INVARIANT: weighted IV is non-positive. Model may not be appropriate.
- Model implies no positive equity value under these assumptions. Valuation is speculative/low-confidence.
- Model mismatch: residual income inappropriate for asset-light financial (BVPS $0.00 not meaningful vs price $57). Consider FCF model.
- DATA UNAVAILABLE: per-share values suppressed due to missing/unreliable shares data.
FINANCIALS
Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)
From Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF's SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | — | -993.5M | $-5.12 |
| 2024 | — | 16.1B | $82.95 |
Cash Flow (5yr)
Capital expenditure isn't tagged in this filer's machine-readable data (the CapEx column shows "—"). The free-cash-flow column is therefore operating cash flow less stock-based compensation only — an upper bound on true owner earnings, not the real figure. Companies that report capex under a custom label (some large IFRS filers do) look better here than they are.
| Year | Operating CF | CapEx | − SBC & adj. | Free Cash Flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 3.7B | — | — | 3.7B |
| 2024 | 21.5B | — | — | 21.5B |
How we define FCF: operating cash flow − capital expenditure − stock-based compensation (owner-earnings basis — SBC is a real cost to shareholders even though it's non-cash). This is the same owner-earnings FCF definition the valuation model uses, though the DCF's starting value is a EPS basis (residual-income model), not this single year.
Balance Sheet
| Total Assets | 14.5B |
| Total Liabilities | — |
| Equity | — |
Similar companies worth a look
Same sector and industry, similar fundamentals shape. Verify everything yourself — this list is computed mechanically and does not reflect our judgment about whether any of these are a good investment.