Bitcoin ‘After Dark’ ETF Would Bet on BTC as Wall Street Sleeps

A company called Tidal Trust II filed an application with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday for an exchange-traded fund that would only offer Bitcoin exposure when U.S. markets are closed.

The fund, dubbed the Nicholas Bitcoin and Treasuries AfterDark ETF, would also hold short-term U.S. Treasuries during the day, according to the filing. As a result, the ETF would mirror Bitcoin’s overnight return profile, for investors based in the U.S.

Unlike spot Bitcoin ETFs, which were approved last year, the ETF would not hold Bitcoin as an underlying asset. Rather, the fund aims to track Bitcoin’s performance by investing in futures contracts, options on indices, and spot Bitcoin ETFs themselves.

“We looked at this last year and found most of [Bitcoin’s] gains are in fact after hours,” Bloomberg Intelligence Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas said on X. “[The] bigger takeaway here is the ETF industry is going to try everything.”

In recent weeks, Bitcoin’s sell-off has appeared to deepen around 9:30 am ET, leading some onlookers to question the dynamic, and American market participants, on X.

“Bitcoin dumping once again after [the] New York open,” entrepreneur and content creator Lark Davis remarked in November. “Did someone disable the buy button for Americans?”

Tidal Financial Group describes itself as a purveyor of “white label ETF solutions,” and its filing prominently features an image for “XFunds by Nicholas Wealth.”

Decrypt has reached out to XFunds for comment.

XFund’s products are billed on its website as “not your grandpa’s bond fund,” alongside images of mustached men depicted in grayscale tones on Wall Street. As financial markets adapt, “so should your investments,” the website continues.

The firm already offers an actively-managed fund that trades on the NYSE under the ticker symbol “BLOX,” which provides exposure to blockchain-related firms. That includes exposure to trading platforms, payment processors, and crypto miners.

Bitcoin changed hands around $92,700 on Tuesday, a 1.6% increase over the past day, according to CoinGecko. Its price had meanwhile fallen nearly 4% over the past year.