The first publicly-traded bitcoin futures fund has burned a record billion-dollar hole in investors’ pockets during its initial year of trading.
The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF broke records after listing as BITO on the NYSE in October last year, becoming the fastest ETF to blast above the $1 billion mark in assets under management, with $1.1 billion in inflows in just two days.
It went on to draw in $1.8 billion of inflows over the following 12 months, according to Morningstar Direct data.
However, as of Wednesday, its AUM stood at just $614 million — a loss for investors or just under $1.2 billion, the research firm found. The debut-year loss is larger than that for any other ETF in history, it said.
Meanwhile, the fund’s share price has plunged70%, putting it in the bottom ranks of ETF performers, as uncertainty around the path of Federal Reserve interest rate hikes caused investors to ditch risky assets.
ProShares’ fund made its stock-market debut at a time when investors’ interest in cryptocurrencies was soaring, and bitcoin hit a then-record high of $67,000 in the week that it launched.
