Fees continue to fall each day.
"It was like two years of fee wars were condensed into a morning," said Bloomberg Intelligence Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas regarding filings seen the morning of Jan. 8. "I didn't think we'd be at 25, 30 basis points for a year or two."
Balchunas expects that on Jan. 10 the SEC will approve 19b-4 applications filed regarding spot bitcoin ETFs.
That's the deadline for the commission to either approve or deny a proposed rule change to list and trade shares of the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF.
He added that he expects the S-1s — or the S-3 in the case of Grayscale Investments' offering — to "go effective" the same day.
That would "put us at launch Thursday or Friday," Balchunas said.
Bitwise Asset Management Chief Investment Officer Matthew Hougan was asked if the 0.24% fee meant that Bitwise would officially be the lowest, during a Jan. 8 Crypto Town Hall X Spaces hosted by Scott Melker, Ran Neuner and Mario Nawfal.
"I think it's conceivably possible for people to update their S-1s again," Hougan said, adding, however, that he believed that was probably unlikely. "But we don't know for sure. We won't know for sure until these products are live."
Regarding Grayscale's decision to charge a 1.5% sponsor's fee, the Bitwise CIO said that while he couldn't speak for Grayscale, when looking at the history of ETF companies, the question is how much in assets they may retain vs. how much they gain if Grayscale lowers the fee to get new assets.
"Some of the assets in … products that have existed for a while have big, embedded capital gains, and therefore even if the fee is higher, people won't sell out of them because they don't want to realize … that tax event," Hougan said. "So that may be part of their calculus, I don't know."
The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which Grayscale is seeking to uplist to a spot bitcoin ETF, had roughly $29 billion in assets under management as of Jan. 8, according to Grayscale's website.
The trust, which has an inception date of Sept. 25, 2013, currently charges a 2% management fee.
BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, filed an amended S-1 filed Jan. 8 for its entry in the spot bitcoin ETF race, the iShares Bitcoin Trust. The filing shows the firm plans to charge a sponsor's fee of 0.3% with a 12-month waiver to 0.2% for the first $5 billion in trust assets.
The Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund is slated to charge a 0.39% sponsor fee, according to an amended S-1 filed Jan. 8.
The ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF is slated to charge a 0.25% sponsor fee, which will be waived for a six-month period starting on the day the trust's shares are listed or the first $1 billion of trust assets, whichever comes first, according to an amended S-1 filed Jan. 8.
The ability to access bitcoin in the form of an ETF "would be a milestone moment" for investors and financial advisers, a Grayscale spokesperson said in a statement.
Grayscale is "incredibly proud of the work we have done to grow GBTC into the world's largest Bitcoin investment vehicle, blazing a path forward for all spot Bitcoin ETFs to come to market," the statement said. GBTC is the symbol for the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.
"Upon appropriate regulatory approvals, we expect that GBTC will continue to be a best-in-class offering for investors looking to access a spot Bitcoin ETF with market-leading liquidity, tight spreads, high trading volumes, and a decade-long track record of operational success – managed by an asset manager with a passion, commitment, and specialty in crypto," the statement said.
