Grayscale’s ‘cheap’ fees for Mini Bitcoin ETF are ‘hypothetical’ — analysts

Grayscale Investments' has declared its upcoming "mini" version of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) will be almost a tenth cheaper than the current GBTC fees, making it the cost-effective option among the approved spot Bitcoin ETFs.

However, investors shouldn’t get their hopes up yet, according to Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas.

“This is pro-forma financials and as such hypothetical,” Balchunas declared in an April 20 post on X, explaining that while changes are possible before launch, the fees were intended to catch investors’ attention.

“The good news is they had to pick a number for this and knew ppl would be watching and they decided on 15bps,” he explained.

Grayscale has proposed fees for its new Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust (BTC) to be set at one-tenth of the current 1.5% fee for GBTC, according to a recent filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

With a suggested fee of 0.15%, it is positioning its ETF to have the lowest fees among the 11 approved spot Bitcoin ETFs introduced in January , closely followed by Franklin Templeton at 0.19%. 

Following behind are the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB) and VanEck Bitcoin Trust (HODL), both at 0.20%.

CEO of crypto-focused reviews portal Apollo, Thomas Fahrer, told his 42,900 X followers in an April 21 post that Grayscale "offering cheap" alternative fees was necessary to compensate for the large amount of GBTC outflows.

“Grayscale has lost 315K BTC in outflows since launching, and they needed to plug the leak,” he said.

Related: Bitcoin halving hype breaks week-long ETFs outflow streak

This comes amid many investors withdrawing funds from the GBTC product since the launch of Bitcoin ETFs in January, which offer a more competitive fee for Bitcoin exposure.

Since the launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs on Jan.11, GBTC has seen approximately $16.73 billion of outflows, according to Farside data .

Cointelegraph recently reported that the shares of the new Bitcoin trust are planned to be distributed to existing GBTC shareholders, as GBTC will also contribute an undisclosed amount of Bitcoin to the new trust.

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