The team at a four-year-old, $1.053-billion-AUM (as of yesterday) thematic ETF shop in New York City is offering a new way to bet against the cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystem.

Sylvia M. Jablonski Kampaktsis Defiance ETFs CEO, Chief Investment Officer

Today, Sylvia Jablonski, CEO and chief investment officer of Defiance ETFs, LLC [profile], unveils the launch of the Defiance Daily Short Digitizing the Economy ETF (IBIT on the Nasdaq). IBIT is an actively managed ETF specifically designed to provide the daily inverse of the performance of a different, actively managed ETF: the four-year-old, $552-million-AUM (as of yesterday) Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK).

"We remain highly bullish on the growth of crypto and the digital asset ecosystem over the next few years," Jablonski states. (Indeed, one of Defiance's five other ETFs focuses on investing in blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystems, as well as NFTs.) "However, given the recent onset of the crypto winter — the flood of layoffs and revenue losses — we believe shorting positions such as Coinbase, Galaxy and Robinhood, along with those involved in the metaverse, like Meta and Roblox, will provide downside protection in the current environment."

IBIT comes with a management fee expense ratio of 95 basis points (though the Defiance team estimates that other expenses, like loan fees, could go as high as 375 bps). The fund is a series of ETF Series Solutions.

Defiance serves as IBIT's investment advisor, and Vident Investment Advisory, LLC (VIA) is the fund's subadvisor. The fund is PMed by Ryan Dofflemeyer (senior portfolio manager at VIA), Austin Wen (portfolio manager at VIA), and Rafael Zayas (senior vice president, head of portfolio management and trading at VIA).

The new fund's other service providers include: Cohen & Company, Ltd. as independent accounting firm; Foreside Fund Services, LLC as distributor; Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLPU.S. Bank Global Fund Services as administrator and transfer agent; and U.S. Bank National Association as custodian. 

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