The Cosmos Access Bitcoin Purpose ETF (CBTC) will be shut down. Its operator, Cosmos Asset Management, applied on Wednesday to Cboe for “de-quotation” of the fund and a similarly structured ethereum ETF. Trading for CBTC is halted until Cboe responds to their application.
“While we strongly believe in the asset class, we are all disappointed with this result. The ETFs are ring-fenced by independent external service providers, which is a key transparent risk mitigation structure across all asset classes… We will continue to follow the process in the best interests of all unitholders.”
Dan Annan, Cosmos CEO, in an interview with the Australian Financial review.
We covered the launch of CBTC earlier in the year and compared it to the 21 Shares Bitcoin ETF (EBTC), which is still available on Cboe.
The most-recent data indicates a market cap for CBTC of about $900k. Management costs are advertised as 1.25%. As such, revenue generated from this fund for Cosmos amounts to approximately $11k annually. Evidently, this is not sufficient to cover operation of such a fund with compliance and insurance overheads. Meanwhile, Monochrome Asset Management has announced Gemini as a custodian for their soon-to-be-released funds.
Investors are able to avoid management fees by holding bitcoin themselves. Numerous guides are available, including instruction for using multi-signature mechanisms. E.g., How to Store your Bitcoin by Sparrow Wallet.
CBTC did not hold bitcoin directly. Instead, it held Canadian-listed Purpose Bitcoin ETF (BTCC-B), which in turn held assets with Gemini. On the same day, Cosmos also applied to shut its Global Digital Miners Access ETF.
