BITO clearly benefited from the first move advantage and controls 95% of the total combined assets of these three ETFs.
All three of these ETFs are substantially the same by investing in near-term expiration bitcoin futures contracts.
The only real hiccup in the recent bitcoin ETF launches was that BITO needed to move away from its goal of investing only in current-month expiration contracts and add next-month contracts as well due to contract position limits and the overwhelming demand for its shares.
XBTF’s trading pattern is choppier since it was so thinly traded in the early going, but you can still tell that it’s essentially tracking the performance of the other two.
XBTF comes cheaper with an expense ratio that’s a full 30 basis points lower than BITO and BTF.
This difference in expense ratios would likely be more important when comparing a bond or stock ETF, but it could be less so when it comes to crypto.
That makes the decision of whether to go with BITO, BTF or XBTF really dependent on if you’re going to be a trader or an investor.
If you want to bitcoin for the longer-term and plan on making just a single trade to establish a position, XBTF is probably the better bet.
If you’re more of a trader and expect to be getting in and out of positions regularly, BITO is the better option.
XBTF has a clear advantage over BITO and BTF when it comes to the expense ratio.
XBTF’s current $10 million asset base might not end up growing much larger than it is, in which case the spread may not come down that much at all.
Still, the idea behind using expense ratios and trading costs as the deciding factor between funds that are substantially the same in composition is still relevant.