ARK Invest discloses 80 bps fee in spot Bitcoin ETF filing

Experts say Cathie Wood’s company is the first issuer to publicly disclose basis points (bps) fees for its Bitcoin ETF, signaling constructive talks with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

ARK Invest and 21Shares filed an update to their joint form S-1 application with the SEC for a spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETF amid industry-wide anticipation that America’s premier securities watchdog would approve such products in the coming weeks or months.

The amended ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF under the ticker ARKB included the fund’s bps fee stated as 80 bps, the first issuer to do so, according to Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas. “Honestly a bit higher than I expected,” said ETF expert James Seyffart on X, speaking about the expected expense ratios for the basket of spot BTC ETFs in SEC review at press time.

There’s a bunch of updates in here. Lot of new risk disclosures (which is to satisfy Corp Fin no doubt). One interesting thing is they sticking to in kind creations redemptions (albeit in a hybrid model) to minimize tax and spread issues.

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) November 20, 2023

Other issues like WisdomTree have also submitted amendments to their bids while the SEC delayed its decision on a handful of applications including Franklin Templeton and Hashdex.

ETF experts predict a 90% chance that the SEC will approve spot Bitcoin ETF by January 2024, despite the commission’s history of rejections for crypto-related ETFs tied to spot prices.

The SEC, however, has approved several futures ETFs pegged to the same underlying assets, which spurred a long-standing debate by crypto proponents regarding the regulator’s review process. 

Issuers like BlackRock have moved to defy the odds, filing for both spot Bitcoin and spot Ethereum ETFs as the SEC engaged firms over their respective filings following a judicial defeat against Grayscale.