Does a bitcoin ETF actually hold bitcoin?

What it is not, almost always, is a fund. 53 of the 70 are 1933 Act trusts that file a 10-K rather than registered funds that file an N-PORT; BHDG, BITC, BITO, BNAV, CHNL, CRDD, DOJE, EETH, HBTC, MAXI, NGHT, ORO, SOLZ, SSK, STLR, XRPI and XRPR are registered series and file an N-PORT. A 1933 Act trust has a sponsor, not an adviser. It publishes no 19a-1 notice and appears in none of the SEC investment company files the rest of this site is built from. Sponsors and the market say ETF. The filings say trust.

Holding the coin does not give a holder the coin’s return. The trust charges a sponsor’s fee, pays a custodian, and creates and redeems in blocks. Its shares trade at whatever the market pays, not at what the coin is worth. All of that shows up in one number: the fund’s total return minus the coin’s over the same days. The sponsor does not publish that number.

2 funds here are quoted rather than traded, closing unchanged on more than one day in twenty. ETFIQ publishes them with the reason and never ranks them against funds that trade every day. A price nobody moved is not a price.