Hashdex liquidates $14.7 million Bitcoin ETF as IBIT draws $143.6 million

Hashdex’s $14.7 million Bitcoin ETF is in liquidation after trading and creation orders ended, leaving remaining shareholders waiting for a cash payout rather than an exchange exit.

The asset manager announced the closure on Aug. 3. The Hashdex Bitcoin ETF, known by its DEFI ticker, completed its last day of NYSE Arca trading on Aug. 17 and stopped accepting creation orders on the same date. Hashdex said the fund would then liquidate its remaining Bitcoin and wind up its operations.

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The closure came just before a positive day for other U.S. Bitcoin products. Farside Investors, which publishes an automatically updated table of ETF flows, showed a provisional $189.3 million of net inflows across the products in its Aug. 18 row. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, or IBIT, accounted for $143.6 million.

Hashdex reported approximately $14.7 million of DEFI assets under management as of July 30. The sponsor said it considered the fund’s asset base, trading liquidity, operating costs, investor interest, product fit and other operational factors.

The formal liquidation plan filed with the SEC was more specific: DEFI’s net assets relative to its operating expenses made it unreasonable and imprudent to continue the fund over the long term.

The contrast points to fund-specific scale pressure, not a retreat across the Bitcoin ETF category. BlackRock’s iShares product page showed IBIT with $48.07 billion of net assets as of Aug. 5, more than 3,000 times DEFI’s July 30 AUM snapshot. That comparison uses different dates, and one provisional inflow day does not establish a permanent winner-take-all trend. It does show how category-level demand can coexist with the closure of a small product whose sponsor concluded that its own economics no longer worked.

What remaining holders receive next

Investors who kept DEFI past Aug. 17 no longer have NYSE Arca liquidity. They are instead due a cash distribution based on the net asset value of their shares during liquidation.

The amount is not fixed at the $14.7 million AUM snapshot. Hashdex said it will reflect closing and transaction costs, along with Bitcoin price movements while the remaining holdings are sold. The sponsor warned that those movements could be substantial.

The payment date is inconsistent across Hashdex’s official documents. Its public announcement and the press release filed as an exhibit point to a distribution on or about Aug. 28. The body of the Aug. 3 SEC filing and the liquidation plan instead say on or about Aug. 24, while noting that dates may change.

Hashdex’s current public timetable therefore points to late August, with Aug. 28 as its shareholder-facing expectation rather than a guaranteed date.

The closure applies to DEFI, the sole series of the Hashdex Commodities Trust. It is separate from the Hashdex Nasdaq CME Crypto Index ETF, or NCIQ, and Hashdex said it continued to manage more than $200 million in products available to U.S. investors.