A crypto ETF does not simply track the coin it holds. It buys and sells shares in blocks, pays custody and fee costs, and trades at whatever price the market sets for the fund rather than for the coin itself. All of that shows up as a gap between what the fund returned and what the coin returned over the same stretch. On Oct 23, 2026, ETFIQ can measure that gap for 50 spot crypto ETFs. 41 of them closed within a point of their coin, and the typical difference across the group is 0.20%.
The gap is easiest to read where several funds hold the same coin, because the coin's move is identical for all of them and what's left is what each fund cost to hold. Solana shows this plainly: of 9 funds, only 1 of 8 measurable ones landed within a point of the coin, and the median difference is +1.4%, with Solana itself up 40.1% over the window shown. Bitcoin and Ether tell a steadier story. Bitcoin's 13 funds show a median difference of −0.2% against a median coin return of −26.4%, with 11 of 12 measurable funds within a point. Ether's 11 funds show a median difference of −0.1% against a median coin return of −38.1%, with 10 of 11 within a point. XRP, Dogecoin, Sui and Avalanche each show their own median, ranging from −0.1% to +0.7%, with every measurable fund on XRP, Dogecoin and Sui landing within a point of the coin.
Individual fund rows show the same pattern at finer grain. Over three months, the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF and the 21Shares Solana Staking ETF each returned +41.9% against Solana's +40.1%, a difference of +1.8%, the widest positive gap on the list. At the other end, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF returned −27.5% over one year against Bitcoin's −26.4%, a difference of −1.1%, the widest negative gap among measurable funds. Many rows sit much closer: the Bitwise XRP ETF and the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust each show a difference of +0.0% or −0.0% against their coin.
Two trusts, covering Stellar, are quoted too thinly to compare. They closed unchanged on more than one trading day in twenty, so their difference against the coin reflects the days somebody traded rather than what the fund itself did, and they are published on that basis rather than ranked against the others.
34 fund-windows cannot state their gap by simple subtraction. Once a return has compounded far enough, subtracting one cumulative return from another produces a number that describes nothing real. The Grayscale Ethereum Staking ETF (ETHE), since January 2020, returned +627.8% against Ether's +1,854.4%; subtracting gives −1,227 points, which is meaningless. The compounded gap, calculated from the two growth factors instead, is −62.8%, and that is the number published for those windows.
Readers can check any fund's own difference, its holding period, and whether it falls among the 41 within a point or the 34 needing the compounded-gap treatment on ETFIQ's fund pages.