A bitcoin held in a brokerage account is not quite the same thing as a bitcoin. ETFIQ can measure 33 spot crypto ETFs against the coins they hold as of September 23, 2026, and 21 of them finished within a point of that coin's own move. The typical gap, across all 33, is 0.40%. That is the fee, the custody arrangement, the mechanics of creating and redeeming shares in blocks, and whatever the market happened to pay for the shares rather than for the coin, folded into one number. It is also the one number on this desk that no sponsor publishes itself.
Nine coins are spread across 48 exchange-traded funds, and the funds built on the same coin are where the gap earns its keep. The coin's own move is identical for every fund that holds it, so whatever separates one fund from another on the same coin is, by definition, what it costs to hold that fund rather than the coin. Bitcoin carries the most company: 13 funds, a median difference of +0.2%, and 11 of 12 comparable funds landing within a point, against a median coin return of −24.7%. Ether shows 11 funds, a median difference of −0.1%, with 9 of 10 within a point, against a median coin return of −35.6%. Solana has 8 funds but only one comparable window, sitting at −0.5% against a coin return of +55.9%. XRP is the outlier worth noting: 6 funds, a median difference of +1.6%, and none of the 5 comparable funds within a point of the coin, against a coin return of +40.0%. Dogecoin's three funds show a median difference of +3.0%, also with none within a point. Litecoin and Polkadot each show a single comparable fund running a few points above their coin.
Two trusts are quoted too thinly to compare in either table, closing unchanged on more than one trading day in twenty. Their difference against the coin reflects the days somebody actually traded them, not necessarily what the fund did over the full period, so they are shown with that caveat rather than placed alongside the rest.
A separate group, 44 fund-windows in all, cannot have its gap stated by simple subtraction at all. Once returns compound far enough, subtracting one percentage return from another stops meaning what it looks like it means. The clearest case: ETHE since January 2020 returned +627.8% while Ether itself returned +1,854.4%. Subtracting those numbers gives -1,227 points, a number with no real-world interpretation. The site instead publishes the compounded gap between the two growth factors, which for that same window is -62.8%, and that is the number used wherever compounding has run long enough to break simple subtraction.
Readers who want to see this for a specific fund can pull up its ticker on the live desk and check the same three numbers shown here: the fund's return, the coin's return, and the difference, updated to the same close.