Crypto ETF average cost basis

How we estimate it

A spot ETF changes the coins it holds only through creations and redemptions. For every fund we take its daily net creations or redemptions in dollars and the coin’s volume-weighted average price that day.

• A creation adds coins (dollars ÷ that day’s average price) and adds the dollars to the fund’s cost.
• A redemption removes coins at that day’s price but takes cost out at the fund’s running average entry. Redemptions therefore do not move the average entry; only creations do.
• Average entry = cost of the coins still held ÷ coins held. An asset’s entry combines all its funds: their total cost ÷ their total coins.
• P&L = coins held × latest price − cost. It is unrealised and before fund fees.
• Positions update once a trading day, after the previous day’s flows are published (T+1). The price is refreshed whenever the page updates, at most every 10 minutes.

What it does not show

• The price any single investor paid: shares that change hands on the exchange do not move a fund’s coins.
• Intraday prices: every creation is valued at the coin’s average price for the day, not at the moment it was made.
• What holders of converted trusts originally paid. No fund starts with an opening balance of its own: only creations and redemptions in the flow data count. Where the flow data records a trust’s holdings as its first-day flow, as for ETHE ($9.2B) and the Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust ($1.02B) on 22 July 2024, those coins enter at that day’s price.
• GBTC. Its trust holdings are not in the flow data, so it starts from zero on 11 January 2024. Its flows since then have been net outflows, and a redemption can only remove coins that came in through creations, so it holds no coins in the estimate and is not listed.
• The fund’s reported holdings: coins held is our running count from flows, and management fees, which funds pay in coin, are not deducted.