BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust approaches $1B in net inflows — Morningstar

ETHA will be the first Ether exchange-traded fund to crest the $1 billion mark.

BlackRock’s Ethereum exchange-traded fund (ETF) has reached approximately $1 billion in net inflows, underscoring its lead among rival ETF ETFs, according to data from fund researcher Morningstar shared with Cointelegraph. 

According to Morningstar, the iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) has pulled in $992 million in net inflows, putting the fund on track to surpass the $1 billion mark imminently. 

“It’s very likely, but not a certainty” that ETHA will crest $1 billion in net inflows by close of market on Aug. 21, Bryan Armour, director of passive strategies research at Morningstar, told Cointelegraph. “I believe a single creation unit would put it over the top.”

The Ether (ETH) ETF’s net assets are slightly below $1 billion—$837,898,429 as of mid-day Aug. 21—because of ETH’s underperformance since ETH ETFs started trading in July.

“Two things impact net assets: net flows and performance. Poor performance has kept net assets much lower than total net flows into the fund,” Armour said. 

Related: Crypto ETFs will expand to new asset types, indexes — Grayscale executive

Fund issuers say ETH ETFs are gaining surprising traction among registered investment advisors (RIAs), who direct up to half of fund flows in the $9 trillion ETF market.

“A pleasant surprise to me has been the significant interest from the adviser community” in ETH ETFs, Kyle DaCruz, director of digital assets product for asset VanEck, an asset manager that sponsors crypto ETFs, told Cointelegraph.

DaCruz said advisers find Ether “easier to value and explain to their clients” than Bitcoin (BTC) because the blockchain network “is cash flow producing” and resembles a technology stock. Ethereum validators earn fees in ETH for processing network transactions. 

According to Morningstar data, net assets in ETH ETFs stood at approximately $7.3 billion as of the close of the market on Aug. 20. 

Grayscale Investments, the largest crypto fund issuer with approximately $25 billion in assets under management (AUM), anticipates that more crypto ETFs will soon hit the market. 

“We’re going to see a number of more single asset products, and then also certainly some index-based and diversified products,” Dave LaValle, Grayscale’s global head of ETFs, said on Aug. 12

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