ETH vs FETH

ETHAGrayscale Ethereum Mini Trust ETF

FETHBFidelity Ethereum Fund

In short

ETH The cheap seat in spot ether. A grantor trust that does one thing (hold ether, track its index price) for 0.15% a year, well under the going rate for the category, from a 2024 launch class that is still finding its pecking order.

FETH Fidelity's spot ether fund keeps the coins in-house: the ether sits with Fidelity Digital Assets, a New York-chartered trust company, instead of being farmed out to a third-party custodian like most of the shelf.

Stated mandate

ETH The Trust passively seeks to have Shares, measured by Ether per Share, reflect the value of its Ether holdings using the Index Price, after expenses and other liabilities.

FETH The Trust aims to track ether's performance through the Fidelity Ethereum Reference Rate, after accounting for the Trust's expenses and other liabilities.

Why people hold it

• ETH 0.15% a year, versus 0.25% for the typical spot-ether fund. Among funds tracking the same reference, only EZET lists less at 0.00%.
• The mandate is narrow and it is honored: hold ether, reflect the Index Price after expenses. One of the tightest implementations in its spot-ether peer group.
• Assets run into the billions and shares trade actively, which puts it among the easier names to get into and out of in a young category.

• FETH Fidelity custodies its own fund's ether through Fidelity Digital Assets, chartered by New York regulators since 2019, a setup no other digital-asset ETP issuer had at launch.fidelity.comfidelitydigitalassets.com
• Plain ether, no derivatives: the trust holds the coin and tracks the Fidelity Ethereum Reference Rate after expenses, and it has stayed very close to that rate.fidelity.com
• One of the original July 2024 spot ether launches and an actively traded name in the group, which tends to show up as tighter spreads for buyers.

Worth knowing

• ETH This is spot ether, undiluted. Price swings are large in both directions and the trust is built to pass them straight through, not to cushion them.
• No distributions. Whatever happens here comes from ether's price, less the 0.15% fee, with nothing paid out along the way.
• Launched in 2024, so the history is thin and our risk read leans on roughly a year of data rather than a full market cycle.

• FETH The 0.25% sponsor fee sits at the top of this group: Grayscale's ETH charges 0.15% and Bitwise's ETHW 0.20% for the same spot exposure.
• It is a grantor trust, not a 1940 Act fund, so the usual mutual fund and ETF investor protections do not apply.
• No distributions here. It is pure price exposure to one volatile asset, and the ride reflects that.fidelity.com

Full ETH profile⁠

Full FETH profile⁠