Hashdex will stop trading its DEFI spot Bitcoin ETF after the Aug. 17 close and liquidate its holdings, paying investors cash by Aug. 28. Shares outstanding fell 25% in three days as investors exited ahead of the shutdown, a fund that has logged only six inflow days since converting to spot Bitcoin holdings in 2024.
Hashdex will stop trading its DEFI Bitcoin ETF after the Aug. 17 close, giving investors a final window to exit before the fund is liquidated. Investors who remain after trading ends will receive cash from the liquidation of its Bitcoin holdings by Aug. 28, according to an SEC filing. The eventual payout will reflect the fund's net asset value after Bitcoin price movements, transaction costs, and other closing expenses.
Shares outstanding drop 25% before shutdown
The approaching deadline is already shrinking the fund. Hashdex data showed DEFI held about $8.7 million in assets and 134.95 BTC on Aug. 11, down from $11.77 million and 180.26 BTC on Aug. 7. More significantly, shares outstanding fell to 120,000 from 160,000 over those three days, a 25% decline that indicates investors were redeeming positions ahead of the shutdown.
Broader Bitcoin ETF inflows bypass DEFI
The contraction comes even as money has returned to US spot Bitcoin ETFs, highlighting how unevenly that demand is distributed. During the previous week, US spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted $865.3 million in net inflows between Aug. 3 and Aug. 7, Farside Investors data showed. BlackRock's IBIT accounted for $693.5 million, or 80.1%, of the total, leaving roughly $171.8 million for the rest of the market combined.
However, the five-day streak ended Aug. 10, when the group recorded $144.6 million in aggregate outflows.
Weak demand predates the liquidation
That weakness predates the firm's liquidation effort. DEFI converted from its earlier Bitcoin futures strategy to permit direct Bitcoin holdings on March 27, 2024, but did not record its first daily inflow until December that year. Since the conversion, the fund has registered only six inflow days and three outflow days, reflecting how rarely it attracted fresh capital despite the broader expansion of the spot Bitcoin ETF market.
Its filings show the same difficulty attracting capital. DEFI issued $2.14 million of shares in 2025 but redeemed $4.61 million, resulting in $2.47 million of net capital outflow and leaving about $11.90 million in net assets at year-end, its annual filing showed. Activity then stalled in early 2026: the fund recorded no creations or redemptions in the first quarter, while management fees fell to $6,453 from $20,385 a year earlier and its annualized gross expense ratio declined to 0.25% from 0.56%.
Despite the ETF's imminent shutdown, Hashdex maintains that it is not abandoning the US market, saying it continues to manage more than $200 million in products available to US investors.
Source: CryptoSlate
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