Grayscale Investments announced the launch of its latest product, the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust, trading under the ticker BTC. The product began trading at 4 a.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, following the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approval of its Form 19b-4 last week.
The “BTC” ticker is associated with a derivative product of Grayscale’s flagship fund, GBTC, featuring a management fee of 0.15%. This move comes as part of Grayscale’s strategy to counter the ongoing market cap decline of its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and its Ethereum counterpart, Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE).
The Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust, seeded as a GBTC spin-off, aims to address the lagging inflows of GBTC, which has struggled to compete with other exchange-traded funds (ETFs) since its conversion from a close-ended fund to a spot ETF. Despite being the only ETF to launch with a large client base, GBTC has faced challenges due to Grayscale’s higher fees compared to its competitors.
Grayscale charges GBTC holders 1.5% in fees, significantly higher than the 20 to 30 basis points per year charged by competitors like BlackRock, some of whom have waived their fees for early buyers. In contrast, the Bitcoin Mini Trust’s fees are set at 0.15%, exactly ten times lower than GBTC’s.
