Cboe Australia exchange has added two more cryptocurrency-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs), increasing the total number of crypto ETFs available to Australian investors to six.
The 3iQ CoinShares Bitcoin (BTC) Feeder ETF and the 3iQ CoinShares Ether (ETH) Feeder ETF were created by 3iQ Digital Asset Management, a company based in Canada.
Both of the Australian funds get their feeds from the firm’s TSX-listed Canadian ETFs, the 3iQ CoinShares Bitcoin ETF, and the 3iQ CoinShares Ether ETF. The Canadian ETFs’ underlying assets are BTC and ETH held in cold storage by the Gemini crypto exchange.
3iQ’s funds join 21Shares’ and Cosmos Asset Management’s Bitcoin and Ether-backed funds, the latter of which had launch delays in April due to a still-unnamed service provider needing time to enable the launch.
Three ETFs, a Bitcoin and Ether ETF from 21Shares and a Bitcoin ETF from Cosmos, were live in early May, becoming Australia’s first crypto ETFs. On May 31, Cosmos launched an Ether-backed fund.
The Cosmos ETFs’ underlying assets, like those of the 3iQ funds, are direct investments in the Canadian Purpose Bitcoin and Ether ETFs, but the 21Shares funds are backed by Bitcoin and Ether reserves kept in cold storage by Coinbase.
The 3iQ ETF has the lowest expense ratio of the six, at 1.2 percent, which is 0.05 percent lower than the 21Shares and Cosmos ETFs, both of which have an expense ratio of 1.25 percent.
The three original funds from 21Shares and Cosmos had a slow start to trading, with only $1.3 million in volume on the first day of trading, significantly less than the predicted $1 billion in inflows.
Total inflows to the two 21Shares funds totaled roughly $936,500, while Cosmos’ Bitcoin fund attracted slightly over $398,000.
According to Cboe data as of this writing, the two 3iQ ETFs have seen a volume of 13,592 and 9,754 shares traded of the Bitcoin and Ether ETFs, respectively, accounting for about $73,415 and $73,605, for a total of over $147,000, which is significantly less than its competitors.
