An 8-A share registration filing, in this case for Nasdaq, is usually one of the last steps before an ETF goes live.
BlackRock took another step toward introducing its bitcoin income exchange-traded fund on Nasdaq, filing a share registration document that often signals an imminent debut.
The world’s largest asset manager filed the Form 8-A for the iShares Bitcoin Premium Income ETF on Thursday, usually one of the last procedural moves before an ETF goes live.
The filing “typically means launch in one week,” Eric Balchunas, an ETF analyst at Bloomberg, wrote on X, adding that he would bet the fund, ticker BITA, starts trading on June 18.
Balchunas said a day earlier that he expected the fund to debut “very soon” and noted BlackRock was racing to beat a competing Goldman Sachs product to market. Goldman’s fund is due to go live around July 1.
BlackRock’s fund will earn income by selling call options on BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), the largest spot bitcoin ETF, with $49 billion in net assets. Each month, it will write options on a portion of its holdings and collect the premium as income.
The trade-off is upside, because selling the options caps how much the fund gains if bitcoin rallies. Its planned 0.65% fee undercuts the two largest covered-call bitcoin funds, which charge 0.95% and 0.99%.
Earlier filings show the fund has been seeded and is already buying bitcoin and IBIT shares and writing options. With the 8-A now in, the main step left is for the registration to become effective.
The launch would push BlackRock further into turning bitcoin into an income product for mainstream investors, on top of the spot exposure IBIT already provides.
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