The Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust (ETH) is now the most competitive in annual sponsor fees, thus triggering a possible fee war ahead.
In a bid to obtain further market competitiveness, Grayscale Investments filed an amended S-1 document with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on July 18 to lower its sponsor fee. According to the SEC filing, the Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust (ETH) lowered its management fee from 0.25 percent to 0.15 percent annually.
The company also noted that it will be waiving the fee to 0 percent for the first six months, but applicable to a maximum of $2 billion in assets under management (AUM). As a result, the Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust is now offering the lowest annual management fee compared to the rest of the spot Ether ETF issuers.
UPDATED Table of Ethereum ETFs and their fees that are set to launch next week. Grayscale's $ETH will now be the lowest cost ETF at 0.15% pic.twitter.com/UjoaHvHegH
— James Seyffart (@JSeyff) July 18, 2024
As Coinspeaker reported on Thursday, Grayscale intends to divest 10 percent of the $10 billion from the Grayscale Ethereum Trust ($ETHE) to seed the Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust. The ETHE is expected to bleed in a similar fashion to the GBTC after listing next week due to its high sponsor fees of about 2.50 percent.
Notably, the US SEC approved the proposed rule change to list and trade shares of the Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust and ProShares Ethereum ETF.
Grayscale Triggers Spot Ether ETF Fee War
The notable decline in the management fees from the Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust is expected to compel the rest of the spot Ether ETFs to follow a similar path. According to Seyffart, there is a likelihood that ProShares Ethereum Trust might not launch next week as expected since they have not yet filed their updated S-1 documents as of Friday during the London session.
The high demand for the spot Bitcoin ETFs and the spot Ether ETFs in addition to huge competition among the issuers is expected to further escalate the fee war ahead. Moreover, the demand for Ethereum is gradually rising globally amid the mainstream adoption of web3 projects and digital assets.
Notably, the Ethereum network is the undisputed leader in real-world asset tokenization in addition to smart contract development. The introduction of Ethereum staking and auto-burning mechanism last year has significantly helped Ether become a sound form of money.
Market Impact
Amid the ongoing hype fueled by the upcoming listing of spot Ether ETFs in the United States, ETH price has surged more than 17 percent in the past two weeks to hover around $3,378 on Friday. The large-cap altcoin, with a fully diluted valuation of about $406 billion and a daily average traded volume of around $14 billion, has attracted notable attention from both retail and institutional investors.
Having established a solid supper range between $2,808 and $2,915 in the last four months, Ethereum’s price could be aiming for a new all-time high in the near term.
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