Every Bitcoin and crypto ETF, in one place
Tickers, real fees after waivers, assets, custodians and listing venues for the whole US market — plus the part most sites skip: how to actually place the trade, and when owning the coin outright makes more sense than owning the fund.
- US spot Bitcoin ETFs
- 12
- Lowest sponsor fee
- 0.14%
- Category assets
- $99.6bn
- Bitcoin held by ETFs
- ~1.23 million BTC
- Trading hours
- 9:30–16:00 ET
Crypto markets never close. A regulated exchange lets you buy at 3am on a Sunday; an ETF does not. Compare both routes →
Start here
Three ways people arrive at this page
Most visitors want one of three things. They want a straight list of the funds with the fees attached. They want to understand what they would actually own before they commit money. Or they already know and just need to place the trade without fumbling the order ticket.
The directory is built around those three jobs. Nothing here is a sponsored placement, no issuer pays for a position in a table, and every number carries the date it was checked — because in this corner of the market a figure without a date is close to useless. Bitcoin moved roughly 25% in August 2026 alone, and since these funds are essentially one asset in a wrapper, their assets under management moved with it.
The Bitcoin ETF list
All 12 US spot funds with tickers, sponsor fees, assets, exchanges and custodians in one sortable reference.
Open the directory 02 — THE CONCEPTWhat you actually own
A grantor trust holding bitcoin — not a 1940 Act fund. That distinction changes your protections more than most people realise.
Read the explainer 03 — THE TRADEPlacing the order
Which brokers offer them, why a limit order beats a market order at the open, and the three settings people get wrong.
See the walkthroughThe short version
The six largest US spot Bitcoin ETFs
Between them these six hold more than nine of every ten dollars invested in the category. Everything below them is a rounding error by comparison — which matters, because size drives the spread you pay every time you trade.
| Ticker | Fund | Issuer | Exchange | Fee | Assets | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IBIT | iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF | BlackRock | Nasdaq | 0.25% | $60.2bn | 60.5% |
| FBTC | Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund | Fidelity | Cboe BZX | 0.25% | ~$13.6bn | 13.6% |
| GBTC | Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF | Grayscale | NYSE Arca | 1.50% | $10.1bn | 10.1% |
| BTC | Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF | Grayscale | NYSE Arca | 0.15% | $4.78bn | 4.8% |
| BITB | Bitwise Bitcoin ETF | Bitwise | NYSE Arca | 0.20% | ~$3.0bn | 3% |
| ARKB | ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF | 21Shares (ARK Invest sub-adviser) | Cboe BZX | 0.21% | ~$2.6bn | 2.6% |
Analyst note
The concentration in this table is the single most under-discussed fact in the category. IBIT alone holds around 60% of the assets and roughly 63% of the bitcoin. That is not a criticism of BlackRock — it is a description of where the liquidity went. In practice it means the difference between the largest fund and the smallest is not a rounding error in fees, it is the difference between a 0.03% spread and one three or four times wider. If you trade in size, or trade often, that gap will cost you more than the expense ratio.
Browse the directory
Every section of the site
The market is not one thing. A spot fund, a futures fund, a 2x fund and a miner ETF all say "Bitcoin" on the tin and behave completely differently. These are grouped by what they actually do.
Bitcoin ETF list
All 12 US spot funds — tickers, sponsor fees, assets, listing venue and who holds the coins.
OpenCrypto ETF list
Beyond bitcoin: ether, Solana, XRP, index baskets and the wave of single-asset funds that followed the 2025 rule change.
OpenEthereum ETF list
Spot ether funds, which ones stake, how rewards are paid, and the five amendments still sitting with the SEC.
OpenFees & expense ratios
What each fund charges once the introductory waivers have expired — and why the cheapest headline is not always the cheapest fund.
OpenIssuers & custodians
Who sponsors each fund, who holds the bitcoin, and the authorised participants named in the filings.
OpenListings outside the US
Canada got there first, Europe uses ETNs, Hong Kong allows in-kind. And why US investors should think hard before buying any of them.
OpenFund types
Not all "Bitcoin ETFs" hold bitcoin
This trips people up constantly. A futures fund holds contracts. A 2x fund holds swaps and resets every day. A covered-call fund often holds no bitcoin at all — it builds the exposure out of options. Here is what each category really is.
Futures ETFs
They hold dated CME contracts and must roll them forever. In a normal market that roll costs money every month — which is precisely why spot funds destroyed this category commercially.
BITO, BTF, BITC and othersLeveraged ETFs
Two times the daily move, reset every session. Hold one for a month in a choppy market and compounding quietly eats you, even if bitcoin ends where it started.
BITX, BITU, BTCLInverse & short ETFs
Short exposure without a margin account or borrow fees. Same daily-reset arithmetic applies, in the other direction.
BITI, SBIT, BTCZCovered call & income
Headline distribution rates north of 60% that are mostly return of your own capital. The mechanics matter enormously here.
BTCI, YBTC, MSTYMiners & crypto equities
Companies, not coins. Higher beta, real business risk, and two of the three dedicated miner funds have just pivoted towards AI data centres.
WGMI, BITQ, BKCH, BLOKSpot vs futures
The single comparison that explains most of the performance gap between two funds that appear to track the same thing.
Read the breakdownThe fundamentals
What a spot Bitcoin ETF actually is
A spot Bitcoin ETF is a trust that owns bitcoin and issues shares against it. You buy the shares through an ordinary brokerage account, exactly as you would buy Apple or an S&P 500 fund. The trust holds the coins with a qualified custodian, publishes what it owns every day, and the share price tracks the bitcoin price minus the sponsor's fee.
The wrapper is where the nuance lives. These funds are grantor trusts registered under the Securities Act of 1933 — they are not registered investment companies under the Investment Company Act of 1940, which is the law that governs almost every other ETF you have ever bought. That single structural fact carries real consequences, and very few articles spell them out.
What the wrapper gives you
- Full '33 Act disclosure plus 10-K and 10-Q reporting
- An independent qualified custodian and audited financials
- A regulated broker under FINRA supervision
- SIPC protection on the brokerage account itself
- Eligibility inside an IRA, Roth IRA or 401(k)
- Daily transparent pricing and an arbitrage mechanism
What it does not give you
- An independent board with fiduciary duties over fees
- The 1940 Act limits on leverage and affiliated transactions
- Mandated diversification — this is one asset, full stop
- Any protection whatsoever against the price falling
- The ability to withdraw, spend or self-custody your bitcoin
- Trading outside US market hours
What you don't get None of that makes these funds bad. For most people they are the most practical way to hold bitcoin exposure alongside the rest of a portfolio, particularly inside a tax-sheltered account. But "SEC-approved" is not the same as "safe", and SIPC coverage protects you against your broker failing — never against bitcoin falling 50%. That distinction is worth internalising before you size the position.
Worth knowing
Every one of these trusts pays its sponsor fee in bitcoin, by selling a sliver of its holdings. Because a grantor trust passes everything through to shareholders, each of those sales is a taxable disposition for you — even in a year when you never touched a single share. It is small, but it is real, and it appears on the tax documents of people who assumed they had a completely passive holding. We cover it in the tax guide.
Fees look tiny. Over a decade they are not.
The spread between the cheapest and most expensive spot Bitcoin ETF is roughly ten to one. Morgan Stanley's MSBT charges 0.14%. Grayscale's original GBTC charges 1.50%. On a $25,000 position that is $35 a year against $375 a year, for exposure to the identical asset held in broadly similar custody arrangements.
Grayscale's fee has driven roughly $17.5 billion out of GBTC since it converted, and the fund has shed something like 447,000 bitcoin. Its answer was to launch a second fund — the Mini Trust, ticker BTC — with the same sponsor, the same custody, and a 0.15% fee. If you are still sitting in GBTC in a taxable account, the calculation is genuinely awkward: switching triggers capital gains, staying costs 1.35 percentage points a year. There is no clean answer, only arithmetic specific to your cost basis.
There is a second cost most comparison tables ignore entirely: the bid-ask spread. IBIT trades at roughly a 0.03% median spread and quotes in penny increments. The smallest funds can be three or four times wider. Buy and hold for a decade and the expense ratio dominates; trade monthly and the spread does. Our fee page works through both, with the arithmetic laid out.
An ETF tracks the price. An exchange gives you the asset.
If you want bitcoin you can withdraw to your own wallet, send to someone, or buy at two in the morning, the fund wrapper is the wrong tool. A regulated exchange is the right one.
Registered with FinCEN as a money services business, licensed in 38 US states and DC, and FCA-registered in the UK.
The real decision
Fund or coin?
This is the question underneath almost every other question on this site, and the honest answer is that it depends on what you want the exposure to do.
If bitcoin is a line item in a diversified portfolio, sitting in a retirement account next to index funds, rebalanced once a year and never thought about in between — the ETF is almost certainly the right wrapper. It is simple, it is tax-sheltered where it can be, and there are no private keys to lose.
If you want bitcoin because it is bearer property that settles without a counterparty — because you want to withdraw it, hold your own keys, move it across a border, spend it, or simply buy on a Sunday evening when something happens — then an ETF gives you almost none of what you came for. You would be buying a share that references the price, which is a completely different thing.
Plenty of people sensibly do both: the fund inside the IRA where it is tax-efficient, the coin on an exchange or in self-custody for everything else.
Fund or coin Getting invested
Where and how to buy
Access is no longer the hard part. Almost every mainstream US broker carries these funds, and buying bitcoin directly takes about as long as opening a bank account. Choosing well is where the effort belongs.
How to buy a Bitcoin ETF
Opening the account, funding it, finding the ticker, and the order-ticket settings that actually matter — including why you should never use a market order in the first fifteen minutes of trading.
Step by stepBrokers compared
Fidelity, Schwab, Interactive Brokers, Robinhood, Vanguard and the rest — commissions, fractional shares, IRA support, and an honest read on how usable each platform's interface really is.
Compare platformsHow to buy Bitcoin
Buying the asset itself: choosing a venue, passing verification, funding methods ranked by cost, placing the order, and moving coins into your own custody afterwards.
Read the guideWhere to buy crypto
Exchanges, brokerage apps, peer-to-peer marketplaces, bitcoin ATMs and OTC desks — what each really costs, and which ones to avoid.
See the optionsPrefer to skip the wrapper?Open an account on a regulated exchange, verify once, and buy bitcoin directly with a card or bank transfer — no market hours, no expense ratio, and the option to withdraw to your own wallet.
Get startedGuides
Understand it before you buy it
Longer explainers for the parts that genuinely repay a careful read — how creation and redemption keeps the price honest, what the tax treatment really is, and where the risks sit.
What is a Bitcoin ETF?
The plain-English version, including what "grantor trust" means for you.
How they work
Creation, redemption, authorised participants, custody and why the price tracks.
Tax treatment
Wash sales, the collectibles myth, and the fee-in-kind quirk that surprises people.
Regulation & approvals
From the Grayscale ruling to generic listing standards, with the release numbers.
ETF basics
How exchange-traded funds work at all, if you are starting from zero.
Order types
Market, limit, stop — and the one you should default to.
Risks
Concentration, custody, closures and drawdowns, stated without hedging.
OTC desks
How large tickets clear away from the order book.
Market context
Where the category stands
The launch in January 2024 was the most successful ETF debut in history by almost any measure. Cumulative net inflows have reached roughly $54.8 billion, and the funds collectively hold something close to 6% of all the bitcoin that will ever exist.
The story since has been less linear than the headlines suggest. Category assets peaked around $158 billion in October 2025 and sat near $99.6 billion at the end of August 2026 — most of that swing is the bitcoin price rather than investors leaving, but not all of it. The first half of 2026 saw net outflows of about $5.4 billion, the first negative half-year since launch, with June alone taking out $4.5 billion. August then turned decisively positive at roughly $3 billion.
Two structural things changed in 2025 and both matter. In July the SEC allowed in-kind creations and redemptions, letting market makers deliver bitcoin rather than cash — which tightens spreads. In September it approved generic listing standards, so an exchange no longer needs a bespoke rule filing for each new product. That second change collapsed approval timelines from roughly eight months to something closer to two, and it is the direct cause of the flood of Solana, XRP and other single-asset funds that arrived through late 2025.
And in August 2026 the category recorded its first ever closure. Hashdex's DEFI wound down with about $14.7 million in assets. It will not be the last — several funds sit below the level at which a sponsor can plausibly cover its own costs.
Category flows of all bitcoin that will ever exist is now held inside US exchange-traded funds — roughly 1.23 million coins. Four years ago that number was zero. Whatever you conclude about the asset, the ownership structure of bitcoin has changed permanently.
Common questions
How many Bitcoin ETFs are there in the US?
Which Bitcoin ETF has the lowest fee?
Is a Bitcoin ETF safer than buying Bitcoin directly?
Can I buy a Bitcoin ETF in my retirement account?
Where do Bitcoin ETFs actually keep the bitcoin?
Ready to make your first purchase?
Compare the funds here, then decide which wrapper suits you. If it is the coin rather than the fund, an exchange account takes minutes to open.
Operating since 2013 under FinCEN money services business registration and state money transmitter licences in 38 states and DC.