The competition between bitcoin (BTC) spot ETFs is now complete with the arrival of the fund managed by the Hashdex company.

Among all the funds that were approved last January in the United States, Hashdex is the last to go into action , marking its debut today, March 27.

In a statement , Hashdex announced the name change of its bitcoin futures ETF fund to Hashdex bitcoin ETF under the ticker DEFI.

The modification is part of the change in investment strategies to allow the fund to provide spot holdings of bitcoins, the company says.

“The fund's investment policy is designed to maximize its bitcoin holdings, with at least 95% of the fund's assets earmarked to be invested in spot BTC. The remaining 5% can be invested in BTC futures contracts traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), in cash and cash equivalents.”

Hashdex, investment and asset management company.

The launch of the ETF was carried out by Hashdex in its role as "digital asset advisor", together with the company Tidal which acts as the sponsor of the fund and BitGo assumes custody of the bitcoins .

DEFI is one of the few bitcoin spot ETFs that does not use Coinbase as a custodian . The exchange, which now handles 90% of the digital asset custody of several of these funds, entered the ETF game in June 2023 to address the funds' regulatory challenges with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). of the United States.

Eric Balchunas, ETF specialist at Bloomberg Intelligence, commented on DEFI that, despite its late arrival, it could capture part of the market , although this “will only happen if the management fee is competitive.”

Hashdex has set a fee of 0.90%, the second highest among ETFs, behind only the Grayscale fund which has a fee of 1.5%, a factor that has caused large capital outflows since its launch.

In this way, Hashdex thus joins the competition with funds such as BlackRock (IBIT) and Fidelity (FBTC), which have accumulated significant inflows and have established themselves as the stock market assets with the largest holdings in their first 50 days of trading.