Do crypto ETFs actually track the coin?
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Mostly, and the gap is small. Of the 45 spot crypto ETFs ETFIQ can measure on Oct 28, 2026, 36 finished within a point of the coin they hold over their longest window. The difference carries the fee, the custody cost and whatever the market paid for the shares rather than for the coin, all together.
A spot crypto ETF holds the coin through a custodian and trades like a share, so a holder gets the coin’s return inside a brokerage account instead of a wallet. What that convenience costs shows up in one number: the fund’s total return minus the coin’s over the same days.
It is not only the fee. Shares are created and redeemed in blocks, the custodian charges, and the shares trade at whatever the market pays, not at what the coin is worth that second. All of it lands in the same difference. That is why ETFIQ measures the difference instead of reading the fee off a prospectus.
Two things can make a number here misleading, and both are marked on the page. A fund whose price sits unchanged on more than one trading day in twenty is quoted rather than traded, and its difference reflects only the days someone did trade. 2 are in that state. And over a long window two returns cannot simply be subtracted, because compounding dominates the subtraction, not tracking.
On ETFIQ today
Answered from ETFIQ data as of Oct 28, 2026.Points (pts) are percentage points.
| Ticker | Fund | Holds | The fund | The coin | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GBTC | Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF | Bitcoin | −29.3% | −28.3% | −1.0 pts |
| XRPZ | Franklin XRP Trust | XRP | −41.2% | −40.5% | −0.7 pts |
| DOJE | REX-Osprey DOGE ETF | Dogecoin | −59.8% | −59.2% | −0.6 pts |
| ETHE | Grayscale Ethereum Staking ETF | Ether | −41.9% | −41.3% | −0.6 pts |
| LTCC | Canary Litecoin ETF | Litecoin | −40.0% | −39.5% | −0.5 pts |
| XRPC | Canary XRP ETF | XRP | −42.4% | −41.9% | −0.5 pts |
| GXRP | Grayscale XRP Trust ETF | XRP | −41.0% | −40.5% | −0.5 pts |
| TDOG | 21Shares Dogecoin ETF | Dogecoin | −35.7% | −35.3% | −0.4 pts |
| XRPR | REX-Osprey XRP ETF | XRP | −49.9% | −49.5% | −0.4 pts |
| TOXR | 21Shares XRP ETF | XRP | −34.4% | −34.1% | −0.3 pts |
| HBR | Canary HBAR ETF | Hedera | −61.9% | −61.6% | −0.3 pts |
| XRP | Bitwise XRP ETF | XRP | −33.6% | −33.3% | −0.3 pts |
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ETFIQ, Do crypto ETFs actually track the coin?, data as of Oct 28, 2026. https://etfiq.com/questions/do-crypto-etfs-track-the-coin
ETFIQ. (Oct 28, 2026). Do crypto ETFs actually track the coin?. Retrieved from https://etfiq.com/questions/do-crypto-etfs-track-the-coin
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