Australia’s first ETF directly holding Ether goes live

Monochrome Asset Management has launched Australia’s first exchange-traded fund (ETF) that directly holds Ether, with assets under management reaching $176,600. 

On Oct. 15, the Monochrome Ethereum ETF (IETH) went live on the Sydney-based equities exchange Cboe Australia with total net assets reaching $176,600 (262,500 Australian dollars) by 2:00 pm local time, according to Cboe Australia.

The fund has a management fee of 0.50% and offers in-kind applications and redemptions — allowing transactions in either cash or Ether (ETH), and is the only dual-access spot Ether ETF in Australia.

BitGo and Gemini are the crypto custodians for the ETF and State Street Australia is the the fund administrator.

IETH’s launch follows the June launch of the firm’s Monochrome Bitcoin ETF (IBTC) which has amassed almost $10.7 million (16 million Australian dollars), according to the company.

CEO of Monochrome Asset Management, Jeff Yew, told Cointelegraph last month that the biggest growth for the firm’s Bitcoin ETF was clients moving crypto from exchanges into the fund.

“Now more and more crypto that had been previously held on exchanges is now being funneled into a regular structure like an ETF,” he said at the time. 

Yew was confident that spot crypto ETFs would perform well in the Australian market because it is “on a very different trajectory with ETFs […] with a bigger pie to carve out,” he said. 

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Australia’s first spot Bitcoin ETF was launched by VanEck in June and currently has total net assets of around $35 million (52 million Australian dollars.)

The United States is the global leader for crypto ETFs, with 11 spot Bitcoin funds trading in the country amassing $19.3 billion in assets under management cumulatively so far this year.

Oct. 14 is shaping up to be a bumper day for inflows into the ETFs with the funds seeing a joint net inflow of $556 million, according to preliminary data from Farside Investors.

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