Bitcoin After Dark ETF Targets Gains While Markets Sleep
Wall Street's latest crypto play doesn't wait for the opening bell.
The Night Shift Strategy
Forget watching tickers from nine-to-five. This fund structure aims to capture price action when U.S. exchanges are dark—leveraging the global, 24/7 nature of digital asset markets. It's a direct bet that the most significant moves happen while traditional finance is offline.
Bypassing the Old Guard
The ETF model cuts out the middleman complexity of direct crypto ownership. No private keys to lose, no wallets to secure—just exposure through a familiar, regulated wrapper. It's finance's version of having your cake and eating it too, assuming the cake doesn't melt overnight in a liquidity crunch.
The Institutional On-Ramp
Products like these serve one master: capital looking for a compliant entry point. They demystify the process, turning volatile crypto into just another line item on a portfolio dashboard. It's accessibility, packaged for funds that still think 'blockchain' is a buzzword from a 2017 board meeting.
Another clever vehicle for betting on volatility without having to understand the underlying technology—because why learn about decentralization when you can just buy the dip through your broker?
After-hours trading drives ETF flows
Bespoke Investment Group tracked a test using the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT), and reported that “buying at the U.S. market close and selling at the next open since January 2024 produced a 222% gain.”
The same test flipped to daytime only showed “a 40.5% loss from buying at the open and selling at the close.” That gap is the return spread the AfterDark ETF is built to target.
Bitcoin last traded at $92,320, down nearly 1% on the day, down about 12% over the past month, and little changed since the start of the year. ETF filings across crypto keep expanding. Products tied to Aptos, Sui, Bonk, and Dogecoin are now in the pipeline.
The pace picked up after President Donald TRUMP pushed for softer rules at the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. After that push, Donald pressed both agencies on token issuers and digital asset exchanges.
Since approvals began in January 2024 under the prior administration, more than 30 Bitcoin ETFs have started trading in the U.S., based on figures from ETF.com. U.S. spot ETFs are now seeing fresh inflows as prices MOVE in a choppy climb after weeks of pullbacks.
On Tuesday, SoSoValue reported that “spot ethereum ETFs pulled in $177.64 million,” the highest level in six weeks. That beat the “$151.74 million” that went into spot Bitcoin ETFs on the same day.
Solana ETFs added $16.54 million. XRP ETFs took $8.73 million. Dogecoin and chainlink funds recorded flat flows. Across all products so far, $21.40 billion in Ethereum has been absorbed by ETFs, equal to about 5% of its $400 billion market value.
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