How we score
Pledge Score · Fund quality. Eight factors. Weights sum to 100. Fund quality is the default sort. It is not a recommendation. We earn no referral fees.
- Expense ratio25%
- Liquidity20%
- Tracking error12%
- Price / NAV tracking10%
- AUM scale13%
- Issuer credibility8%
- Fee transparency7%
- Custodian quality5%
Total fees over 10 years on $10,000, assuming the price doesn't change. Ties listed A–Z. No fee waivers are active (HODL's ended Jul 31, 2026; BTCO's ended Jul 11, 2024).
FAQ
- Why is iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF on top?
- It has the highest Fund quality score in this list. The order is that sort.
- What does “Not published” mean?
- The fund record does not include that figure. The page leaves it blank.
- How is the dollar fee calculated?
- Total fees over 10 years on $10,000, assuming the price doesn't change. Ties listed A–Z. No fee waivers are active (HODL's ended Jul 31, 2026; BTCO's ended Jul 11, 2024).
- Do you earn a fee if I open a fund’s site?
- No. We earn no referral fees.
Not investment advice. Pledge provides comparison data for educational purposes only; scores do not recommend buying, selling, or holding any ETF. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Review each fund's current prospectus before investing.
How to choose your first Bitcoin ETF.
An ETF (exchange-traded fund) is a share you buy in a normal brokerage account that holds Bitcoin for you — so you get the price without setting up a wallet or holding the keys yourself. Four plain questions sort the field. Each one below is answered with the live leader from the 12 U.S. spot funds we track.
Does it actually hold Bitcoin?
You want a spot ETF — one that holds real Bitcoin in a vault, not futures contracts that only bet on the price. Every fund on this page is spot, and a qualified custodian (a regulated firm that guards the coins) holds the Bitcoin. Of the 12 funds, 7 come from established traditional-finance issuers.
What does it cost me per year?
The expense ratio is the fund's annual fee, skimmed quietly from your holding — 0.15% on $10,000 is about $15 a year, 0.50% is about $50. Lower is simply more of the Bitcoin price kept in your pocket. The lowest standing sponsor fee in the cohort is MSBT (Morgan Stanley Investment Management).
Can I get in and out easily?
Liquidity is how easily you can buy or sell without moving the price. Two signals: a big fund (high AUM, the total dollars it holds) and a tight spread (the small gap between the buy and sell price — a narrow gap means less lost on every trade). The deepest, tightest fund is IBIT (BlackRock) at $66.3B and a 3bps spread.
Who runs it — and does it track Bitcoin closely?
A trusted issuer and tight tracking matter. Tracking error is how far the fund drifts from Bitcoin's actual price — smaller is better, because you want the real thing, not a loose copy. The tightest tracker is HODL (VanEck) at 1bps. The highest score in the category is IBIT (BlackRock).
No single fund wins every question — the cheapest (MSBT) is not the most liquid (IBIT), and the tightest tracker (HODL) is neither. The full ranking below shows every trade-off.
Read the IBIT review →Scores are computed live from the tracked-fund data on this page (expense ratio, AUM, median spread, tracking error, and the 8-factor Pledge score). Educational only, not investment advice — review each fund's current prospectus before buying.
Why these 3 specifically?
IBIT
HODL
BTCNo ETF pays for position.
Expense ratio, liquidity, tracking error, price/NAV tracking, AUM, issuer, fee transparency, custody.
Plain-English. No hidden formulas. v3.2 published.
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