THE nine exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tied to the spot price of ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, scooped up net inflows of US$106 million on Tuesday (Jul 23) as they began trading on US stock exchanges, according to data from CF Benchmarks and several trading firms.
The funds that pulled in most of those assets were sponsored by the same firms that emerged as the biggest winners following January’s debut of spot Bitcoin ETFs, CF Benchmarks, a digital asset index provider, noted.
BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust ETF, led the pack with US$266.5 million in inflows, closely followed by Bitwise Ethereum ETF, which had inflows of US$204 million. The Fidelity Ethereum Fund attracted US$71 million in assets.
The Grayscale Ethereum Trust, which converted into an ETF from a publicly traded trust on Tuesday, launched with more than US$9 billion in assets and a fee well above the range of 0.20 to 0.25 per cent of 2.5 per cent. It saw outflows of US$484 million, according to CF Benchmarks and traders. That figure is well above the first-day outflows from Grayscale’s converted Bitcoin ETF in January, which totalled only US$95.1 million in spite of the larger size of that Bitcoin ETF.
In a note published after the market’s close on Tuesday, crypto market-making firm Wintermute Trading noted that investors appear to be rotating out of the Grayscale ETF in favour of other, less costly offerings.
A newly launched lower-cost ETF, the Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust, which levies a fee of only 0.15 per cent, may have picked up some of those assets. It saw inflows of US$15.1 million on Tuesday.
“The real money interest was strong enough to deem the launch a marginal success,” noted Wintermute in its analysis of the initial trading volume of and flows into the new ETFs. REUTERS
