VanEck’s spot Bitcoin ETF jumped 14 times its daily average volume a day before the firm plans to implement a fee cut, reducing entry cost from 0.25% to 0.2%.
According to Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas, the VanEck Bitcoin Trust ETF (HODL) had over $258 million in trading volume on Feb. 20 from 32,000 individual traders. Balchunas noted that VanEck’s volume and traders were much higher than the average numbers of the firm’s new exchange-traded fund.
I’ve never seen a grassroots trading explosion come out of nowhere like this.
Eric Balchunas on X
According to Yahoo Finance, VanEck’s previous high was about $25 million recorded on Jan. 11, the first-day spot Bitcoin ETFs traded in the United States. Since then, VanEck has been outpaced in volume and net flows by BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale.
However, the issuer has moved to stay competitive by lowering its fees. VanEck’s filing with the U.S. SEC shows that its slashed fee will come into effect on Feb. 21, allowing the firm to offer lower fees than spot BTC ETF leader BlackRock, which charges 0.25% alongside Fidelity.
The company also liquidated its Bitcoin futures ETF to consolidate resources around its latest crypto-based offering. VanEck will also allocate 5% of its HODL ETF profits to support Bitcoin core developers.
A similar strategy was implemented with its Ethereum futures ETF, as the issuer pledged 10% of its profits to the Ethereum Protocol Guild for the next decade. VanEck also has a pending spot Ethereum ETF filing with the SEC.