(Bloomberg) — Grayscale Investments LLC plans to launch a clone of the world’s largest Bitcoin fund as billions of people exit the product.
Documents filed on Tuesday showed that the asset manager submitted plans for the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust, which would be physically backed by the cryptocurrency and trade under the ticker “BTC.”
If approved, the exchange-traded fund will be seeded with a percentage of the world’s largest Bitcoin ETF, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), and existing GBTC shareholders will automatically own shares of GBTC and BTC, rather than A taxable event occurs. Filing.
Grayscale’s BTC plans come to fruition as investors continue to divest from $28 billion worth of GBTC. GBTC has seen outflows of more than $11 billion so far this year, ranking second among more than 3,400 U.S.-listed ETFs. Instead, investors send their cash to cheaper competitors, most of which charge 0.3%, while GBTC charges 1.5% annually.
BTC fees have not yet been listed, but are expected to be lower than GBTC, according to a person familiar with the matter. ETF issuers State Street Global Advisors and Invesco Ltd both offer cheaper versions of some of the largest ETFs.
State Street launched the $6.8 billion SPDR Gold MiniShares Trust (GLDM) in 2018 with a 0.1% expense ratio, lower than the 0.4% expense ratio of the older, larger SPDR Gold Shares (GLD). Invesco has taken a similar route, launching the $22.5 billion Invesco Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQM) in 2020, which charges 0.15% annually, and the $251 billion Invesco QQQ Trust Series 1 (QQQ) has an annual fee of 0.2%.
