FILE PHOTO: The company logo and trading information for BlackRock is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 30, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo
(Reuters) -BlackRock and Ark Investment Management on Wednesday lowered the fees for their proposed spot bitcoin exchange traded funds (ETFs), looking to undercut almost a dozen other competitors racing to launch such investment vehicles.
BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust would charge 0.25%, compared with the 0.30% fee set earlier. ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF lowered its fee to 0.21% from 0.25%.
The aspiring ETF managers have kicked off an unprecedented fee war even before an approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for such investment vehicles, emphasizing the urgency with which they are looking to grab a share of the expected capital inflow.
Analysts and academics have noted that fees will be an important factor in determining the inflow of new assets, since all of these ETFs are designed to deliver essentially the same return.
For the 12 months after the ETF is listed, BlackRock's fee would be 0.12% for the first $5 billion of assets in the fund. That would make it among the cheapest, along with Bitwise Bitcoin ETF which is planning to charge 0.20% and waive off the fee on the first $1 billion of assets for six months after the listing.
The revised filings come hours after the SEC said someone briefly accessed its X social media account to post a fake message saying it had approved the long-awaited ETF.
Most issuers, however, are still anticipating that the securities regulator will approve these ETFs at some point late Wednesday afternoon, and that they could begin trading as soon as Thursday morning.
(Reporting by Niket Nishant and Suzanne McGee; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
