(Bloomberg) — Nine U.S. ETFs holding the cryptocurrency Ethereum saw $340 million in outflows during their first week of trading as investors pulled cash daily from a high-fee legacy product that was converted to a traded fund. in return.
The eight new Ether exchange-traded funds, created after last week's approval by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, took in $1.17 billion in the four trading days ended July 26, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. .
The biggest flows were seen by funds from BlackRock, Bitwise and Fidelity, which totaled $442 million, $266 million and $219 million respectively. The current Grayscale Ethereum Trust lost $1.5 billion.
Investors saw Grayscale's fund convergence as an opportunity to cash in, according to a Monday REPORT by CoinShares Ltd. This is similar to when investors pulled billions of dollars from the Bitcoin Grayscale Trust when spot ETFs for Bitcoin were launched in January.
In addition to converting Grayscale's existing fund, the firm also launched an “Ethereum Mini Trust” which has a current fee of 0%, compared to the trust's 2.5%. The trust brought in $91 million last week.
The price of Ether has fallen 4.6% to around $3,331 since the ETFs began trading on July 23. The second largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin is up around 46% so far this year.