Summary VanEck's HODL ETF has shown impressive 65% YoY growth in BTC supply, aided by a fee waiver, making it a compelling option for Bitcoin exposure. Despite smaller initial holdings, HODL's growth outpaces similar funds like BITB, highlighting its potential for investors. Bitcoin network usage is mixed; while USD-denominated settlement remains high, active addresses and network fees are declining. VanEck's fee waiver until January 2026 offers a cost-effective way to gain BTC exposure in tax-advantaged accounts, with potential future benefits for Bitcoin development. When I last covered the VanEck Bitcoin ETF (HODL) for Seeking Alpha shortly after the fund launched, I concluded that there were likely better opportunities elsewhere for those who were interested in buying Bitcoin ( BTC-USD ) through an ETF. Aside from having the second-best ticker of the publicly listed spot ETFs after only the CoinShares Bitcoin ETF (BRRR), VanEck's product is fairly unique in that it's one of only a couple of spot BTC funds that has promised to fund Bitcoin development through fees. I didn't necessarily think that was a good reason to go long HODL last year, saying the following: I think you could argue it's a bit of a marketing play to justify not offering a fee waiver for the first six months like many of the other ETF providers. Turns out, VanEck subsequently did offer a fee waiver for buying HODL and that waiver is still active. Which in my view, is probably a better reason to consider longing HODL. In this update, we'll look at growth in HODL relative to peers, growth in corporate BTC treasuries over the last year, the broader capital flow story for March, as well as the latest network data for the Bitcoin network. The Demand for BTC With the terrific returns for BTC since the launch of the spot ETFs in the US last year, it perhaps shouldn't be a surprise to see the BTC held by the fund has grown strongly over the last 12 months. ETF BTC Supply March 31, 2024 March 31, 2025 Change YoY iShares Bitcoin Trust ( IBIT ) 250.09k 564.3k 314.21k 125.6% Fidelity Wise Origin ( FBTC ) 143.76k 280.9k 137.14k 95.4% Grayscale ( GBTC ) & ( BTC ) 334.92k 231.96k -102.96k -30.7% ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF ( ARKB ) 44.28k 50.16k 5.88k 13.3% Bitwise Bitcoin ETF ( BITB ) 30.73k 38.24k 7.51k 24.4% VanEck Bitcoin Trust 8.65k 14.28k 5.63k 65.1% Source: The Block, figures in BTC While HODL doesn't command a large stack by any means with just 14.3k BTC in assets under management, the 65% year-over-year growth is actually very good considering the growth seen from larger funds like BITB and ARKB. This is particularly interesting when compared to BITB because Bitwise is the other fund manager that has committed a portion of spot ETF management fees to funding Bitcoin development. Now, it should be noted that while HODL is seeing faster growth than a fund like BITB despite potentially appealing to a similar investor, that growth is starting from a much smaller position and the aggregate BTC added to HODL was still less than that of BITB over the last year. More broadly, spot ETFs are by far the largest holding entities relative to the other entities that custody BTC. At 65% year-over-year growth in BTC supply, HODL has a better pace than the 28.1% average among all ETFs/Funds: Holding Entities April 1, 2024 April 1, 2025 Change YoY Private Companies 492,069 440,893 -51,176 -10.4% Governments 569,070 524,669 -44,401 -7.8% DeFi/Smart Contracts 155,728 200,935 45,207 29.0% ETFS/Funds 1,011,431 1,295,408 283,977 28.1% Public Companies 306,798 688,213 381,415 124.3% Total Holdings 2,535,096 3,150,118 615,022 24.3% BTC/USD $69,788 $84,854 $15,066 21.6% Source: Bitcoin Treasuries, as of Noon 4/1/25 The strongest growth by both percentage and nominal change continues to be in public company holdings. However, I think it bears repeating that Strategy ( MSTR ) is nearly the entire market in that realm: Top 5 Public Companies April 1, 2024 April 1, 2025 Change YoY Strategy 214,278 528,185 313,907 146.5% MARA Holdings ( MARA ) 17,381 46,374 28,993 166.8% Riot Platforms ( RIOT ) 8,490 18,692 10,202 120.2% Tesla ( TSLA ) 9,720 11,509 1,789 18.4% CleanSpark ( CLSK ) 5,021 11,177 6,156 122.6% Top 5 Public Companies 254,890 615,937 361,047 141.6% Source: Bitcoin Treasuries, figures in BTC, as of Noon 4/1/25 Of the 381k BTC that has been added to public company balance sheets over the last year, 314k BTC has come from Strategy alone. Meaning a single company accounts for 82% of the YoY growth in public company BTC holdings. Furthermore, four of the top five public company BTC holders are essentially already associated with Bitcoin with the other three companies after Strategy all being BTC miners. Only Tesla has a top-five BTC holding in the public markets and isn't a BTC-focused company. I'm not trying to be pessimistic here, I just want readers to understand that there is a narrative that more public companies are adding BTC to their balance sheets. Though there are certainly exceptions, the reality is that most of those companies adding significant BTC to the balance sheet are very much associated with Bitcoin already. Regardless, after what was a generally atrocious March for capital flows through digital asset investment products, year to date flow is still positive: Asset (mil) MTD Flows YTD Flows AUM Bitcoin -$826 $1,519 $114,475 Ethereum -$370 $316 $9,565 Multi-asset -$206 -$137 $6,366 Solana $27 $86 $1,194 XRP $15 $168 $957 Source: CoinShares, as of March 28th There was over $800 million in month to date outflow for Bitcoin financial products through March 28th. That MTD flow unwound about 35% of Bitcoin's 2025 capital investment from over $2.3 billion at the start of the year to $1.5 billion approaching the end of March. Total AUM is still well over $114 billion and Bitcoin remains the clear standout for capital allocators in 2025. Network Data As I generally do every month, I like to provide readers with updated network data in key metrics like fees and active addresses. This will perhaps not be a big shock to those who have followed along through these reports, but Bitcoin's usage continues to slip when measured by many of these metrics. Monthly Network Metrics Fees MAAs March 2023 $23.5 14.5 March 2024 $85.7 14.0 February 2025 $16.4 11.3 March 2025 $15.1 10.9 YoY -82.4% -22.1% MoM -7.93% -3.54% Source: Token Terminal, figures in millions With $15.1 million in full-month fees, Bitcoin's March 2025 network fees fell by 8% from February and over 82% year over year. The story isn't quite as bad in the monthly active addresses category, where the 10.9 MAAs in March was just a 3.5% decline from February and a 22% fall year over year. But the two-year trend is generally down. That's not necessarily true with settlement volume: USD-Denominated Transfer Value (CoinMetrics) While the BTC-denominated transferred value remains close to lows from 2014, the USD-denominated transferred value on the Bitcoin blockchain is still encouraging and indicative of a network that is indeed used for sending value globally. At the end of March, the 30-day rolling average for daily transferred value was $9.4 billion. Scaling efforts are more mixed. For instance, Lightning Network BTC supply is close to falling below that of scaling-peer Liquid: Lightning Network Capacity (mempool.space) Lightning Network capacity, something that many Bitcoiners have been hoping would help with scaling, has not meaningfully grown in over two years. We've actually seen the opposite happening, with BTC-denominated capacity falling from 5,283 BTC in early February to 4,428 at the end of March. The roughly 16% decline in capacity in a matter of just a few weeks isn't terribly encouraging. That said, Lightning Network is admittedly not a large driver of usage at this point. But I do think this highlights the need for further development on top of Bitcoin - which holding BTC through VanEck could theoretically help facilitate... but not yet. Closing Summary Bitcoin's network usage story remains mixed as I see it. On one hand, dollar-denominated settlement is still high and indicative of a network that continues to have utility. On the other hand, that utility is seemingly used by fewer people. Measured through a metric like unique monthly active addresses, users are declining, and that's coming at the expense of fees paid to miners. Nevertheless, the last 15 years would suggest Bitcoin is by far the fastest horse in the race against fiat. I don't personally think BTC can ever actually replace Gold ( XAUUSD:CUR ), and those betting on that to happen are probably going to be disappointed. Fortunately, the anti-dollar trade doesn't have to be an 'either-or' scenario because we can simply just buy both if we are so inclined. And if one wants exposure to BTC in something like a tax-advantaged retirement account, HODL will work fine. VanEck has waived the management fee on BTC for the first $2.5 billion in AUM until January 10th 2026. So even though you won't be funding Bitcoin development by holding HODL in 2025, eventually you might.
