Answered from ETFIQ data as of .
Crypto ETF or buy the coin: what is the difference?
The fund holds the coin for you and charges for it, and you own a share rather than the asset. Over their longest window 30 of the 41 spot ETFs ETFIQ measures landed within a point of the coin, so the cost of that arrangement is usually small and it is never nothing.
What you gain is a brokerage account: no wallet, no keys, no exchange, and a security your existing broker settles and reports on. What you give up is direct ownership, and on a proof of stake coin the option to stake it yourself.
The costs are the sponsor’s fee, the custodian, and the friction of creating and redeeming shares in blocks. ETFIQ does not add those up from documents. It measures what came out the other end, which is the fund’s return against the coin’s over the same days, and that figure carries everything including the parts nobody discloses.
The funds are not registered investment companies. A spot crypto ETF is a 1933 Act trust: it files a 10-K rather than an N-PORT, has a sponsor rather than an adviser, and publishes no 19a-1 notice. The industry and the regulator call these digital asset products; the sponsors have renamed most of them ETFs.
On ETFIQ today
| Ticker | Fund | Holds | The fund | The coin | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TDOG | 21Shares Dogecoin ETF | Dogecoin | −32.2% | −32.2% | 0.0 pts |
| XRP | Bitwise XRP ETF | XRP | −32.2% | −32.1% | −0.1 pts |
| BWOW | Bitwise Dogecoin ETF | Dogecoin | −45.8% | −45.5% | −0.2 pts |
| ETHE | Grayscale Ethereum Staking ETF | Ether | −43.3% | −43.6% | +0.3 pts |
| MSBT | Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust | Bitcoin | +8.3% | +8.6% | −0.3 pts |
| GBTC | Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF | Bitcoin | −33.5% | −33.2% | −0.4 pts |
| BTCW | WisdomTree Bitcoin Fund | Bitcoin | −32.8% | −33.2% | +0.4 pts |
| BTCO | Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF | Bitcoin | −32.7% | −33.2% | +0.5 pts |
| XRPC | Canary XRP ETF | XRP | −41.1% | −41.6% | +0.5 pts |
| BTC | Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF | Bitcoin | −32.7% | −33.2% | +0.5 pts |
| FBTC | Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund | Bitcoin | −32.7% | −33.2% | +0.5 pts |
| IBIT | iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF | Bitcoin | −32.7% | −33.2% | +0.5 pts |
Where to next
Where these figures came from
ETFIQ links to the documents behind every figure. It is not affiliated with any issuer, and a link is not an endorsement.
ETFIQ is an independent publisher of exchange-traded fund data and makes no recommendations. Every figure is stated arithmetic on published data. Standards and sources
Cite this page. ETFIQ, Crypto ETF or buy the coin: what is the difference?, data as of Sep 11, 2026. https://etfiq.com/questions/what-is-the-difference-between-a-crypto-etf-and-buying-the-coin Free to use with attribution; the underlying files are at Open data.