Bitcoin and Ethereum VanEck ETNs Cross Half a Billion

“The strong growth of ETNs shows us that VanEck’s offering of simple, low-cost investment opportunities in cryptocurrencies is exactly what investors desire,” Rozemuller added.

The VanEck Vectors Bitcoin ETN has crossed $315 million. While the VanEck Vectors Ethereum ETN, which was launched just this March, has surpassed $125 million.

We’ve tried both and it’s a smooth experience. They track the price seemingly to the dot, with the ticker up and down during trading hours in line with bitcoin’s and ethereum’s movements and for inbetween trading hours, it adds those movements when it opens.

These are notes, but backed by spot bitcoins. However you can’t redeem these shares into actual bitcoin. You can for BTCE, which we don’t have access to for some reason.

BTCE currently has 24,522.857 bitcoin under custody, worth $1.5 billion. If you’re a shareholder you can just send them a letter or an email with your bitcoin address and they send you the coins, making it effectively a convenient custodian.

VanEck can perform the same function, with the company stating they plan to launch more crypto stock traded products following their initial success.

“For VanEck, the future of the crypto market lies in Smart Contract platforms and in applications that make the financial services market significantly more efficient,” Rozemuller said. “Smart Contract programmes enable improved contract processes and entirely new business models.”

One useful product at this stage would be a defi ETF or ETN that tracks some of the major and medium defi dapps as this is currently lacking in the market, something they can probably do because European regulators have been accommodative unlike protectioning SEC.

An even cooler offering would be an NFT stock traded product, especially as for many engaging manually that market can be complicated.

VanEck’s focus for now however seems to be more on adding other tokens after they began trading Solana, TRON and Polkadot in September 2021.