Just a month after launching its spot bitcoin ETF, VanEck announced that it is reducing its sponsor fee, which is the latest in the series of cuts made by issuers in a highly competitive market.
On February 15th, the digital asset manager submitted a supplemental filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The fee reduction
VanEck said in the filing that it would reduce its sponsor fee or its Bitcoin ETF that trades under the HODL ticker.
The fee reduction will go into effect from February 21st and will see the fee reduced from 0.25% to 0.20%. A spokesperson for VanEck shed some light on the company’s decision.
They said that they were committed to proactively evaluating and refining their offerings for investors in this highly competitive and fast-evolving ETF environment.
They added that the fee reduction was a reflection of their commitment to give investors improved access and to deliver value.
Moreover, it would also help to ensure that investors can benefit from one of the most competitive offerings that are currently offered in the Bitcoin ETF market.
Bitcoin ETFs
This investment vehicle has been making the headlines for quite some time now and it gives investors exposure to Bitcoin without requiring them to directly purchase and store the crypto token.
This means that Wall Street investors can essentially purchase BTC without having to deal with crypto wallets or exchanges.
So far, there has been intense interest from Wall Street in these products and the same applies to the competition between issuers.
On January 10th, the US SEC finally greenlit the launch of multiple spot Bitcoin ETFs in the country, after having denied applications for over a decade.
Even before the approval, issuers had already started to reduce their fees in a bid to get ahead of their rivals.
The competition
When the spot Bitcoin ETFs finally became available, both Ark Invest and BlackRock had reduced their fees to 0.25%.
Meanwhile, Franklin Templeton did the same and brought down its fee to 0.19%, which is currently the lowest fee in the market.
The reduction in fee highlights the intense competition amongst ETF issuers in the market to win over clients, but it comes with its pitfalls.
Running a spot Bitcoin ETF comes with a high cost, which includes expenses for custody and security and these cuts could make it difficult for issuers to sustain, especially those that are lagging.
When combined, they could reduce the profitability of the ETF, particularly for those issuers who have smaller war chests as compared to heavyweights, such as BlackRock and Fidelity.
Mathew Sigel, the Head of Digital Assets Research at VanEck, had stated previously that the ETF fees were priced competitively.
He added that the price of Bitcoin was the more important metric to observe because it would determine just how profitable the ETF would turn out to be.
Currently, Bitcoin is trading above the $51,000 mark, the closest it has come to its all-time high price of $69,000 that it had clocked back in 2021.