U.S. investors often turned to European and Canadian-based ETPs for investment, but now the tables have turned as U.S.-based spot BTC ETFs are more easily accessible and more liquid, attracting European investors as well.
The spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) fee war has now reached Europe just weeks after the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved the BTC ETFs in the country.
Before the approval on Jan. 10, several applicants updated their S-1 filings multiple times to lower their ETF fees. Now, a similar trend is being observed among European listed exchange-traded products (ETPs).
Two leading asset managers, Invesco and WisdomTree, slashed fees on their European-listed ETPs by more than 60%. The $137 million Invesco Physical Bitcoin ETP will see a charge reduction from 0.99% to 0.39%, while the $325 million WisdomTree Physical Bitcoin ETP will see a cost reduction from 0.95% to 0.35%.
In Europe, digital asset exchange-traded products are structured as exchange-traded notes (ETN) rather than funds. ETN investors own debt security, whereas ETF shareholders own a piece of the fund’s underlying assets.
The significant cut in fees is attributed to the increased competition and availability of multiple ETFs in the U.S., one of the leading financial markets. Earlier, U.S.-based investors had to look toward Canadian and European-based ETPs for investment; however, with the approval of 11 spot BTC ETFs in the U.S., the demand for European ETPs from U.S. investors has decreased significantly.
In an interview with Financial Times, Invesco’s head of ETFs for Europe, Gary Buxton, said that multiple ETFs in the U.S. lowered their fees to find the “new equilibrium between supply and demand,” resulting in considerably lower prices than existing ETPs in Europe.
Compared with their European alternatives, U.S.-based Bitcoin ETFs are more liquid and available on a single exchange platform, making them more accessible to European investors. The newly launched spot Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. have attracted billions in trading volume from day one, and even after two weeks, they continue to trade billions in daily volume.
Source: cointelegraph.com
