Grayscale launches campaign telling investors to #DropGold from their portfolios

Crypto asset manager Grayscale has launched a mass marketing campaign calling for US investors to ditch gold and to join the digital bitcoin movement. 

The #DropGold campaign aims to convince investors about the limits of using gold as a hedge and to bring awareness to bitcoin as a digital store-of-value; pitching the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust as a key avenue. The campaign's main site, DropGold.com, went live Wednesday and will be followed by video ads across social media and linear TV like Hulu.

Grayscale Investments Managing Director, Michael Sonnenshein, told The Block that Barry Silbert, CEO of the fund's parent company DCG, had the idea for the campaign, hoping to target the older generation in particular. 

"We're going after a narrative around gold being where investors should go when markets turn south or as a hedge against inflation...We're highlighting the absurdity of gold," he said. Sonnenshein added that the firm had opted for the campaign to be intentionally provocative to counter the intense marketing campaigns promoting valuable metals, but acknowledged it would take time to change a deeply-rooted mindset. The fund also said its economic simulations had shown that redistributing just 5% of a gold portfolio into bitcoin could produce "an annualized return that was over 5% higher than that of a pure gold allocation, with lower volatility."

The 42-second commercial shows several investors comically weighed down by gold, and asks: "Why did you invest in gold? Are you living in the past?...Digital currencies like bitcoin are the future...and unlike gold, they actually have utility. Leave the pack behind: it's time to drop gold." 

A screenshot from the commercial