Nine new ETH futures exchange traded funds (ETFs) started trading for the first time in the U.S. on Oct. 2, but recorded just $2 million in total trading volume combined on the widely anticipated day one.
Investment firms ProShares, VanEck, Bitwise, Valkyrie, Kelly, and Volshares launched their ETH futures ETFs on the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE). The funds track futures contracts tied to the value of ETH, five of which hold ETH futures exclusively, while the other four track BTC and ETH futures.
Unprecedented day today with multiple ETFs all launching at same time. No clear winner has emerged, all of them were pretty average, lower than I would have predicted, but its a long run and remember, these hold futures (ETF investors much prefer physical to derivatives) https://t.co/fKGOv8T7pP
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) October 2, 2023
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas noted that the trading volumes were “pretty average” and lower than he would have predicted, but said that it was still too early to declare one issuer a winner.
After day one, that fund would be Valkyrie’s BTF, which tracks both BTC and ETH futures, and recorded $882,000 worth of trading volume on Monday. Coming in second was VanEck’s EFUT which recorded $312,000 in trading volume.
The response to the Ethereum futures ETFs is also significantly lower than what was observed on the first trading day of the first Bitcoin futures ETF – ProShares’ Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) – which saw $1 billion in trading volume on its first day, marking the second-highest trading volume in ETF launch history.
It is worth noting, however, that at the time of BITO’s launch in 2021, Bitcoin was trading at more than $66,000. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum are now trading far lower than their bull market prices – at the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $27,600 and Ethereum was trading at $1,660.
