Ether ETF race evens the odds
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Ethereum ETFs collectively broke $1 billion in trading volume on its first day of listing on major exchanges — what a couple of issuers say was a better-than-expected showing.
Why it matters: Though ether's arrival on major exchanges echoes its larger brother's debut, the competitive dynamic has shifted.
The intrigue: 👆Boutique asset managers appear to have a fighting chance to compete with the juggernauts in the ether ETF race, more so than they did with bitcoin.
Zoom in: The absence of one juggernaut — Cathie Wood's Ark Invest — shows up in Bloomberg Intelligence's leaderboards, with 21Shares' Core Ethereum ETF ranking last in trading volumes.
- Its Ark-partnered bitcoin ETF ranked fourth behind just Grayscale, BlackRock and Fidelity when it debuted in January.
Behind the scenes: "Today's trading is a bit more even among all the competitors," Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck, tells Axios.
- The VanEck Ethereum ETF (ETHV) had a 7% market share today, whereas in bitcoin, it has less than 1%, according to Sigel.
- The ether funds drew a fraction of bitcoin's volume — roughly 20% of spot bitcoin funds on their first day, translating into net flows of over $107 million.
Bitwise Asset Management lands third in line behind BlackRock's (ETHA) and Fidelity (FETH) in trading volume.
- That's excluding the converted Grayscale Ethereum ETF (ETHE) which started out of the gate with the most assets under management.
- Also, the mini version of that ETF (ETH) was seeded with some of those assets.
Matt Hougan, Bitwise CIO, puts the firm's rank in context: "I mean, Bitwise is a small player compared to Fidelity and they were $138 million and we were $94 million."
- "I'd love to be bigger, but we feel really good about how it shook out."
- Yesterday's flows, he said, were on the upper range of his expectations.
The big picture: First-day flows, excluding Grayscale's converted Ethereum Trust's outflows of $484 million, were over $590 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg analysts.
- After accounting for Grayscale's ETF's outflows of $484 million, net flows shrink to $107 million.
