Nasdaq Files to Add Staking to BlackRock’s ETH ETF

BlackRock, the largest asset management company in the world with over $10 trillion in assets under management, and the leading BTC and ETH ETF issuer, filed to add staking to its spot Ethereum (ETH) exchange-traded fund (ETF) today.

The Nasdaq, where the ETF trades, submitted the filing to the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) to amend BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHA) “to permit staking of ether held by the Trust.”

The ETH price has hardly reacted to the announcement, however, the asset outperformed other major cryptocurrencies such as BTC and SOL over the last week, and is up 21% over the last seven days, compared to BTC’s 5.5%.

This outperformance has driven the ETH/BTC ratio back to 0.029, its highest level since February. The move was largely driven by the ETFs, which experienced record inflows yesterday, surpassing $720 million according to SoSoValue. Nearly $500 million, or 69%, of the total ETF flows on July 16 were through BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust.

Yesterday’s strong performance brings the total U.S. spot ETH ETF net inflows across all products to $6.5 billion. $7.1 billion of total inflows came through BlackRock’s iShares, but the cumulative net total is dragged down by Grayscale’s ETHE, which has a net negative flow of over $4 billion due to the conversion of its ETH Trust.

ETH’s strong performance is also driven by the aggressive buying from Ethereum treasury companies. Most notably, SharpLink Gaming — where Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin is chairman of the board and Consenys is the lead investor — has accumulated an Ethereum treasury worth more than $500 million, while BitMine just announced it has $1 billion in its ETH treasury.

Not the First to File

While BlackRock and the Nasdaq officially filed their amendment today, it is not the first ETF issuer to push for ETH staking with the SEC. In March, both the Chicago Board Options Exchange Group (Cboe) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) proposed adding ETH staking to Fidelity, Franklin, and Bitwise ETFs, and Grayscale followed up with its own proposal at the end of April.

On the news of BlackRock’s staking filing, Vance Spencer, the co-founder of Framework Ventures posted on X “Maybe you didn’t expect lubin and tom lee to lead the tradfi bandwagon to ETH and blackrock to add staking just as the wheels start to turn. But that’s what’s happening.”