IBIT sold 1,062 bitcoin in six months just to pay its 0.25% fee
The largest spot bitcoin ETF held 734,261 bitcoin and $44,187 of cash on June 30, 2026. Its own filings show how shares are made, redeemed and charged.
- What happened
- The iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) reported 734,261 bitcoin and $44,187 in cash on June 30, 2026, in a 10-Q filed August 6, 2026. In the six months to that date it bought 157,501 bitcoin for share creations, sold 192,970 for redemptions and sold 1,062 to pay its sponsor's fee.
- Why
- A spot bitcoin ETF is a grantor trust that holds one asset. Shares are only created or destroyed in 40,000-share baskets by authorized broker-dealers, and every expense is paid by selling a little of the bitcoin, so the bitcoin behind each share drifts down over time.
- The numbers that matter
- 734,261Bitcoin held by IBIT, June 30, 2026 (10-Q)1,062Bitcoin sold to pay the sponsor's fee, Jan–Jun 202640,000Shares in one creation or redemption basket$66.3bnNet assets, October 9, 2026 (fund page)
- Why it matters
- If you own a spot bitcoin ETF you own a fractional claim on a pile of bitcoin that shrinks by the fee each year, and your price can differ from that claim by the premium or discount on the exchange.
- What happens nextas we saw it on 13 Oct 2026
- IBIT's next quarterly 10-Q, covering the period to September 30, 2026, is due on EDGAR within 45 days of the quarter end; the fund page on ishares.com updates net assets, shares outstanding and the basket amount each trading day.
Redemptions, not price, explain the fall in bitcoin held; the fee took 1,062 coins on top.
| Held December 31, 2025 | 770792 |
|---|---|
| Bought for share creations | 157501 |
| Sold for share redemptions | 192970 |
| Sold to pay sponsor's fee | 1062 |
| Held June 30, 2026 | 734261 |
On June 30, 2026 the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, the largest of the spot bitcoin exchange-traded products the SEC approved in January 2024, owned 734,261 bitcoin and $44,187 of cash. Nothing else. No futures, no lending, no second asset. That is what the trust's own 10-Q says, and it makes IBIT one of the simplest financial products a household can buy and one of the most misunderstood.
This piece is not about where the price goes. It is about what you actually own when you own a share, how shares come into existence, and where the fee goes. Every figure is taken from the SEC's approval order, the trust's prospectus, its quarterly filing or the issuer's own fund page, each with its date.
What the SEC approved on January 10, 2024
SEC Release No. 34-99306, dated January 10, 2024, approved 11 proposed rule changes at once: three on NYSE Arca (Grayscale, Bitwise, Hashdex), two on Nasdaq (iShares, Valkyrie) and six on Cboe BZX (ARK 21Shares, Invesco Galaxy, VanEck, WisdomTree, Fidelity, Franklin). The Commission found the proposals “consistent with the requirements of the Exchange Act.”
The order reports that the CME bitcoin futures market was “consistently highly correlated with this subset of the spot bitcoin market,” with full-sample correlations of no less than 98.4% at hourly intervals, 94.2% at five-minute intervals and 76.9% at one-minute intervals. On that basis the Commission concluded that a surveillance-sharing agreement with the CME, together with “other means” of preventing fraud and manipulation, was sufficient.
Two details of the order matter for what follows. First, the products were approved as commodity-based trusts listed under exchange rules, not as mutual funds: IBIT's prospectus states plainly that “the Trust is not an investment company registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940.” Second, the order noted that the January 2024 proposals “only contemplate cash creation and redemption by authorized participants.” That restriction, as the trust's 2026 filing shows below, no longer describes how IBIT operates.
What a share is
The structure is a grantor trust. The prospectus dated July 31, 2025 puts the tax consequence in one sentence: “Owners of Shares will be treated, for U.S. federal income tax purposes, as if they owned a corresponding share of the assets of the Trust.” Your share is a fractional claim on the bitcoin in a vault, with the sponsor as caretaker.
734,261 bitcoin ÷ 1,296,040,000 shares = 0.00056654 bitcoin per share. The filing's own valuation checks out: the bitcoin price it used at June 30, 2026 was $59,101.49, and 0.00056654 × $59,101.49 = $33.48, which is the net asset value per share it reports. The fair value of the bitcoin, $43,395,920,710, divided by 734,261 coins also gives $59,101.50.
The named parties are in the prospectus. The Sponsor is iShares Delaware Trust Sponsor LLC; the Trustee is BlackRock Fund Advisors; the Bitcoin Custodian is Coinbase Custody Trust Company, LLC; the Cash Custodian is The Bank of New York Mellon. The prospectus describes cold storage as keys “generated and stored in an offline manner using computers or devices that are not connected to the Internet,” and states that the Prime Execution Agent “keeps the majority of assets in cold wallets,” a split the Sponsor says it cannot verify.
The trust values its bitcoin using the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate – New York Variant, “calculated as of 4:00 p.m. ET” from an observation window between 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. ET. That is why the fund's net asset value is a 4 p.m. New York number for an asset that trades all weekend.
How shares are made and unmade
Ordinary investors buy and sell IBIT on Nasdaq from each other. New shares are only created, and old ones only destroyed, in blocks. The prospectus: “A block of 40,000 Shares is called a ‘Basket.’” And: “Baskets may be created or redeemed only by Authorized Participants,” which the prospectus restricts to registered broker-dealers. The ETF mechanism is the same one that keeps an S&P 500 fund's price near its holdings; here the holding is one coin.
- An authorized participant delivers either cash or bitcoin to the trust. The prospectus says “these transactions take place in exchange for cash or bitcoin.”
- If cash is delivered, the trust converts it: it “will engage in bitcoin transactions for converting cash into bitcoin (in association with purchase orders),” either with a trading counterparty or through the Prime Execution Agent's Coinbase Prime service.
- No shares are issued until the corresponding bitcoin has been allocated to the trust's account at the custodian.
- Redemption runs in reverse: a basket of 40,000 shares is handed back and the trust delivers bitcoin, or sells bitcoin and delivers the cash.
The 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 states that “the Trust is authorized to create and redeem Shares with authorized participants on an in-kind basis,” and that baskets may be created in exchange for “cash or bitcoin.” The SEC's January 2024 order had described cash-only proposals. The two documents are consistent with each other only because the operating terms changed between them; this article does not trace the intervening filings.
The 10-Q reports 277,840,000 shares created (6,946 baskets) and 340,480,000 shares redeemed (8,512 baskets). To meet creations the trust bought 157,501 bitcoin at a cost of $12,044,781,517; to meet redemptions it sold 192,970 bitcoin with a fair value of $13,883,647,508.
770,792 held on December 31, 2025, plus 157,501 bought for creations, minus 192,970 sold for redemptions, minus 1,062 sold for the fee = 734,261, the June 30, 2026 figure. Shares reconcile the same way: 1,358,680,000 + 277,840,000 − 340,480,000 = 1,296,040,000. Average prices implied by the filing: creations at $12,044,781,517 ÷ 157,501 = $76,474 per bitcoin; redemptions at $13,883,647,508 ÷ 192,970 = $71,947 per bitcoin.
The basket size in bitcoin changes every day, because the fee slowly reduces the bitcoin behind each share. The July 2025 prospectus gave an example: “a Basket requires delivery of $2,448,096.36 or 22.72 bitcoins” as of June 25, 2025. The fund page on October 9, 2026 showed a Basket Bitcoin Amount of 22.64. Same 40,000 shares; 0.08 fewer coins, fifteen and a half months later.
Where the fee goes
IBIT's only ordinary charge is the Sponsor's Fee. The prospectus: it “is accrued daily at an annualized rate equal to 0.25% of the net asset value of the Trust,” and the Sponsor in return assumes “the fees of the Trustee, the Delaware Trustee and the Trust Administrator, the Custodians' Fee, NASDAQ listing fees, SEC registration fees, printing and mailing costs, tax reporting fees, audit fees.” The fund page lists the sponsor fee as 0.25%. Our expense ratios explainer covers how such a number compounds.
A trust that holds only bitcoin cannot pay a dollar fee from income, because there is none. The prospectus says the Sponsor “will cause the Trust (or its delegate) to convert bitcoin into U.S. dollars” to cover the fee, payable “at least quarterly in arrears in U.S. dollars or in-kind or any combination thereof.” The 10-Q shows the result.
| Item | Three months to June 30, 2026 | Six months to June 30, 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Sponsor's fee expense | $35,422,589 | $72,112,039 |
| Bitcoin sold to pay the fee | 525 | 1,062 |
| Proceeds of those sales | $36,873,282 | $76,514,420 |
Bitcoin per share on December 31, 2025: 770,792 ÷ 1,358,680,000 = 0.00056731. On June 30, 2026: 0.00056654. The decline is (0.00056731 − 0.00056654) ÷ 0.00056731 = 0.136% over six months, which annualizes to roughly the 0.25% rate. Creations and redemptions do not change this ratio, because each basket moves bitcoin and shares together; only the fee does. The average price realized on the 1,062 coins sold for the fee was $76,514,420 ÷ 1,062 = $72,048.
The prospectus states that, on the grantor-trust premise, “each sale of bitcoin by the Trust will constitute a taxable event to the Shareholders.” The 1,062 coins sold in the first half of 2026 to pay the fee are therefore sales attributed pro rata to every holder, not a cost borne by the sponsor.
The fund on October 9, 2026, by its own page
The issuer's product page is the daily primary source for a fund of this kind. The figures below were read from ishares.com on October 12, 2026 and carry the page's own as-of date.
| Figure | Value |
|---|---|
| Net assets of fund | $66,282,577,169 |
| Shares outstanding | 1,421,600,000 |
| NAV per share | $46.6352 |
| Closing price | $46.55 |
| Premium/discount | −0.16 |
| Basket Bitcoin Amount (per 40,000 shares) | 22.64 |
| Benchmark level (CME CF BRR – NY) | $82,368.99 |
| 30-day median bid/ask spread | 0.02% |
| Sponsor fee | 0.25% |
| Number of holdings | 1 |
The page does not print a coin count, but the basket ratio lets a reader derive one. 22.64 bitcoin per 40,000 shares = 0.000566 bitcoin per share. 1,421,600,000 shares × 0.000566 = 804,626 bitcoin. Cross-check: 804,626 × $82,368.99 benchmark = $66,276 million, against reported net assets of $66,283 million; the gap is rounding in the two-decimal basket figure. Shares outstanding rose by 1,421,600,000 − 1,296,040,000 = 125,560,000 between June 30 and October 9, 2026, which is 3,139 baskets of net creations.
The closing price of $46.55 against a NAV of $46.6352 is a difference of 8.5 cents, or 0.18% below NAV by our arithmetic; the page's own premium/discount reads −0.16, presumably on its 4 p.m. basis. With 44,603,581 shares traded on an average day over 30 days and a 0.02% median spread, the creation mechanism was doing its job of keeping price and holdings together on that date. That is a statement about one day, not a guarantee of any other.
What it means for your money
Three mechanisms follow from the filings, and none of them requires a view on the price.
- You own bitcoin by proxy, minus the fee. On June 30, 2026 one share was 0.00056654 bitcoin. A year earlier the ratio was higher; a year later it is lower by about 0.25%, and that is before any change in the coin's price. A $10,000 holding pays 0.25% × $10,000 = $25 a year, and the trust pays it by selling coins on your behalf.
- Price and NAV are different numbers. You trade at the Nasdaq price; the trust's value is set at 4 p.m. ET off a one-hour window. Bitcoin trades through the weekend, so Monday's open can gap from Friday's NAV. The fund page publishes the premium or discount every day for exactly this reason.
- The trust cannot change what it does. The prospectus says it “is not actively managed and will not take any actions to take advantage, or mitigate the impacts, of volatility in the price of bitcoin.” A drawdown in bitcoin is a drawdown in the fund, coin for coin. Position sizing is the only lever a holder has, and our position-sizing note is written for that.
For a longer view of what this asset has done against gold over a decade, see the $10,000 bitcoin-versus-gold comparison, and for how to read filings of this kind, how to read a 10-K.
Sources
- Order Granting Accelerated Approval of Proposed Rule Changes to List and Trade Bitcoin-Based Commodity-Based Trust Shares, Release No. 34-99306U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission · Oct 12, 2026 · Primary source
- iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended June 30, 2026 (filed August 6, 2026)SEC EDGAR · Oct 12, 2026 · Primary source
- iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, Prospectus dated July 31, 2025 (Form 424B3)SEC EDGAR · Oct 12, 2026 · Primary source
- iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) fund page, data as of October 9, 2026iShares (BlackRock) · Oct 12, 2026 · Primary source
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