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BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager by assets, received regulatory approval to list its iShares Bitcoin Premium Income ETF on Nasdaq on Tuesday under the ticker BITA. The fund is the firm's second Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded product and its first designed to generate regular income.
The Securities and Exchange Commission granted effectiveness to the fund's registration on 14 Jun, with Nasdaq certifying the listing the following day. BlackRock filed the final Form 8-A on 11 Jun.
Covered calls for income
BITA is an actively managed covered-call fund. It holds bitcoin exposure through a combination of direct bitcoin held in custody at Coinbase and shares of BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), the largest spot bitcoin ETF by net assets. The fund writes monthly call options on IBIT shares and distributes the collected premiums to investors as monthly income.
The trade-off is capped upside: in a sharp rally, gains above the options strike price are forgone. The fund's 0.65% expense ratio undercuts existing covered-call bitcoin products, which charge 0.95–0.99% according to fund filings.
"The ETF will target 15–25% annual yield while trying to capture at least 70% of bitcoin's upside," Eric Balchunas, a senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, wrote on X.
Beating Goldman to market
The debut positions BlackRock ahead of the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, which is expected to introduce a similar income product in early July, according to Balchunas. Grayscale Investments, a US digital asset manager, offers a comparable fund, but BlackRock's IBIT integration and institutional reach could give BITA structural advantages in liquidity and adoption.
BlackRock first filed for the fund in January.