On Friday, one of the six ETFs covering the blockchain space halted creations, with the fund’s final shutdown scheduled for Feb. 5. The REX BKCM ETF (BKC) only had about $5 million in assets under management (AUM).
With the rise in popularity (and the price) of bitcoin in late 2017 to early 2018, there was a strong push to launch a bitcoin ETF, but given the delays caused by regulatory issues, many firms turned to capturing the performance of companies driving the technology that underlaid the bitcoin concept.
Blockchain is a type of digital ledger that is difficult to hack, and many firms are implementing its use for concepts other than cryptocurrencies.
Several funds tracking blockchain-related equities rolled out in January 2018, but REX was a little late to the party, with the launch of BKC in May. The ETF never gathered much in the way of assets, while one of the first-to-market funds, the actively managed Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK), today has roughly $118 million in AUM.
Interestingly, none of the blockchain ETFs has seen much in the way of new assets since the initial hubbub around their launches (read: Blockchain ETFs Stumble Out Of The Gate).
With BKC’s shutdown set for a little less than two weeks from now, the total closures for 2019 will rise to three. That’s a number to watch given the record number of closures we saw in 2018 (152).
Contact Heather Bell at [email protected].
