USCF to liquidate $3.15 million sustainable commodity ETF ZSC

The board of USCF ETF Trust voted Wednesday to liquidate USCF Sustainable Commodity Strategy Fund CZSC, a three-year-old exchange-traded fund that buys futures tied to crops, battery metals, and carbon allowances. A prospectus supplement followed on Thursday. Neither the filing nor USCF's notice gave a business reason. The same board left open a smaller fund launched seven months earlier, USCF Sustainable Battery Metals Strategy Fund DZSB, which held $2.21 million. CZSC never left seed size.

How CZSC will be wound up

Shareholders do not have to sell. Anyone still on the register on the liquidation date will receive cash in their brokerage account, with no fund transaction fee. Selling on the exchange before then may incur the usual brokerage commission. Either path is generally a taxable capital gain or loss; the liquidation net asset value will also fold in any dividends or capital-gains distributions calculated as of that date.

From about October 5, CZSC will start turning the portfolio into cash and "may not be managed in accordance with its investment objective," USCF said. That is the usual last week of a commodity-futures fund: collateral and contracts coming off, not the agriculture, renewable-energy, and battery-metals mix the fund was built to hold.

The book is already thin. Shares closed Thursday at $31.43 on volume of 35 shares. Average daily volume has been 448 shares, or about $14,100. A market order in a book that size is a poor tool. Holders who want an exchange print have about three weeks and should expect to work the order.

Three years, $3.15 million

CZSC opened on August 9, 2023. As of Thursday it held $3.15 million and listed 32 holdings. Holders paid 0.59% a year after a 0.20% waiver on the 0.79% management fee. Roughly a third of the portfolio sat in a Treasury bill maturing September 22, with more in cash; the rest was a strip of single-name commodity futures.

That is a full strategy sitting on a seed check.

The fund is being closed in the middle of its best stretch. Total return was 28.9% over the past year through Thursday. Thursday's session printed a 52-week high of $32.05. Over three years the total was 14.5%. That is a product shut while it was working, after a life that gave a buyer almost nothing to point at.

Funds die of neglect more often than of a bad year. Of the 146 active ETFs that closed in 2025, only six started that year with more than $50 million; most held less than $25 million. This one fits that pattern: too small, for too long, in a theme that never gathered a constituency.

USCF Advisers, LLC, which manages the fund, did not propose a conversion or a replacement. The board simply voted to dissolve it.

What remains of the idea

CZSC was built as a sustainability overlay on commodities. After the cash arrives, the nearest listed commodity funds do a different job. A broad commodity-futures fund, Invesco Optimum Yield Diversified Commodity Strategy No K-1 ETF APDBC, held $7.62 billion as of Wednesday. USCF SummerHaven Dynamic Commodity Strategy No K-1 Fund CSDCI held $753 million as of Thursday. Both run conventional commodity-futures books that include energy.

DZSB remains listed. It is the older, narrower battery-metals fund.

The 28.9% year arrived too late to change the only figure that mattered.