Grayscale, VanEck, Bitwise, Volatility Shares, ProShares, and Round Hill Capital, all based in the U.S. have filed new applications with the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch ETFs that follow Ether (ETH) futures contracts. Volatility Shares was the first to make an application for an ETH ETF in the most recent round, since their proposal …
Grayscale, VanEck, Bitwise, Volatility Shares, ProShares, and Round Hill Capital, all based in the U.S. have filed new applications with the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch ETFs that follow Ether (ETH) futures contracts. Volatility Shares was the first to make an application for an ETH ETF in the most recent round, since their proposal was submitted on Friday. Following on Tuesday, five more people had joined the fray. If approved, the funds would not directly hold any ETH. They would instead track the price fluctuations of futures contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
Grayscale has specifically requested two ETFs in its filing, one for Bitcoin-related assets and one for Ether futures contracts. The first bitcoin futures ETFs were launched in October 2021. Volatility Shares’ 2x Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITX) enabled the first leveraged bitcoin ETF in June 2023. On the other hand, ProShares has taken a different approach, filing for a short ETH strategy ETF that would profit on the S&P CME Ether Futures index’s losses. The fund would invest in daily contracts that mirrored the index’s performance. This means that the fund would gain as much on a particular day as the index would lose, and vice versa. In other words, the ETF would function as a vehicle for shorting the price of ETH.
In the U.S., the SEC has not yet approved any ETH ETFs. If approved, these ETH ETFs might be available as soon as October. This fresh set of ETH ETF filings differs from recent bitcoin ETF ideas from Blackrock and others in that those possible bitcoin ETFs are backed by spot bitcoin rather than futures contracts.
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