Chuck Jaffe: One fund, on point for today. The expert to talk about it. Welcome to the ETF of the Week!

Yes, this is the ETF of the Week, where we get the latest take from Todd Rosenbluth. He’s the Head of Research at VettaFi and at VettaFi.com, you’ll find all the tools you need to dig into the newsworthy, unique, and trending exchange-traded funds that we talk about here. Todd Rosenbluth, it’s great to chat with you again.

Your ETF of the Week is…

Todd Rosenbluth: The CoinShares Bitcoin Mining ETF. WGMI.

Chuck Jaffe: The CoinShares Bitcoin Mining ETF, WGMI. You know, Todd, you and I have been due an ETF of the Week for a couple of years now. But I’ve been doing it even longer because it dates all the way back to 2012 with Tom Lydon. And in the history of ETF of the Week, there’s only been one or two funds that have ever come up more than once.

This fund was ETF of the Week last summer. So, why is it back in your spotlight now?

Todd Rosenbluth: For a couple of reasons. So, we at VettaFi do an annual survey with Bitwise, a cryptocurrency investment company. We’ve been doing this for eight years. We recently, in fact, as of last week, released the results of a study of financial advisors about their views on cryptocurrency: how they’re getting exposure to it, where they see the opportunities, and where they see—where they have concerns.

And what jumped out to me was that even though we’ve seen extremely strong demand for direct exposure to cryptocurrency through the ETF wrapper—spot Bitcoin, spot Ethereum, what have you—that the advisor audience is choosing crypto equity ETFs as the most exciting place where they plan on putting their money to work, and where they plan on putting their clients’ money to work in the year ahead, in the next 12 months.

So, there is greater interest, according to advisors that we talked to, to have access to crypto equity. The most interesting and largest ETF that I came across and thought about was WGMI. And then one last thing to be able to highlight for you and the audience—and then I’ll let you ask me some questions as appropriate—is people probably know that Bitcoin was down last year; in 2025, it declined slightly.

That’s not the case for crypto mining, and certainly not the case for WGMI. This fund was up quite strongly in 2025. It was one of the best-performing non-leveraged ETFs that we have on our radar here. So it performed well; it’s performed well the last couple of calendar years, I believe. It gives you exposure to cryptocurrency, but with equity exposure, there’s a lot to like.

Chuck Jaffe: I am prepared with those numbers, Todd. It didn’t perform "well"— because, you know, well was how it did in 2024 when it was up 23.5%. 

Last year, in 2025, it was up 72.5%. And by the way, in 2023, it was up over 300%. Even this year already, it’s up more than 33%.

But here’s the interesting thing, at least as I look at it, which is this fund—unlike the spot Bitcoin funds—this fund is old enough to have a multi-year track record, which means it’s got a Morningstar rating.

And in spite of those four consecutive years—300 plus, 23.5, 72.5, and now 33% just in a couple of weeks we’ve been into 2026—this fund only gets two stars from Morningstar. And that means on a risk-adjusted return basis, you are certainly significantly up the risk scale, right?

Todd Rosenbluth: You are. So this is a high-risk, high-reward investment style. We’ll probably talk in a moment about how it would fit into a portfolio, but this is not for the faint of heart. This is, you know, crypto mining—crypto investing in general is a higher-risk strategy. The miners—mining companies tend to be a—not taking on leverage in the traditional sense of doubling down your bet, but a higher-risk way of investing.

You get the benefits of diversification by spreading that around among individual companies, and this fund holds several dozen individual stocks. But this is higher risk for people, for their equity part of their portfolio. You’re right. It’s gone up a lot; it’s gone down, obviously, and to offset that in some of the years. I think that as people are increasingly looking towards cryptocurrency equities as where they have a comfort zone, that’s why this ETF continues to gain popularity.

Chuck Jaffe: So, it’s interesting, because around the time that you were highlighting this fund last year, well, you would also, or shortly beforehand, had highlighted some of the spot Bitcoin types of issues because they were new to market. 

For you, as you point out, this is how people are getting their Bitcoin exposure. But is this how you would recommend people get Bitcoin exposure or crypto exposure, or would you recommend they do both? Is this a case of, you know, spot versus miners the same way you have gold funds versus gold mining funds?

Todd Rosenbluth: So I do think—I’m not going to recommend or offer investment advice, and I’m going to try to stay clear enough of that. What we found is that people are using this ETF to get exposure to cryptocurrency. If you’re an advisor or you work with an advisor that is on certain brokerage platforms, direct exposure or spot Bitcoin is not available.

Even though the ETF has been trading, it’s not approved on their platforms. And so people are using the Bitcoin mining ETFs like WGMI to get a proxy for Bitcoin and the price of Bitcoin, but to be able to have it as part of their equity part of their portfolio. That survey that I referenced that we did with Bitwise, what we heard is that people were using it to get exposure to crypto, they were using a slice of their equity portfolio, you know, whether it was something that was tied to mining or it was direct exposure. 

This is a risk asset. And this ETF is a higher-risk, high-reward potential investment strategy. I think it makes sense to be a slice—if you’re considering it—a slice of your equity portfolio the way that you might a thematic ETF.

Chuck Jaffe: Yeah, that would make sense to me as well. You don’t really want to go whole-hog on something like this. It’s interesting as well, because this is basically crypto equities. The expense ratio is kind of middle of the pack; it’s three-quarters of 1%, 75 basis points. Do you not mind a higher expense ratio because of the assets it’s doing? Because if I made the comparison to gold funds/gold mining funds, this would be considered a high expense ratio.

Todd Rosenbluth: Thematic ETFs in general, there tends to be a premium that you pay for it. I think CoinShares has expertise and you benefit from their expertise. They are a leader within the crypto space, not just the ETF space, but the overall ETF ecosystem. This is a relatively new and novel area of investing. And as such, the fees are a little bit higher.

People want to pay as little as possible, but those returns that you cited earlier for this year, for last year, for prior years—75 basis points is included in that. So, your returns are going to be a magnitude of that overall fee. The fees matter; I don’t think they’re the only thing that matters. And so it’s worth knowing that you’re paying 75 basis points, but I’m not concerned about it.

I think it’s important that you’re getting exposure to a range of companies like, Cipher Mining, Riot Platforms, Hut 8. These are companies that I’m not familiar with myself on an individual basis, but you get a diversified portfolio within WGMI.

Chuck Jaffe: Yeah, that’s actually the reason that you want to own something: that you’re getting some of those companies that you don’t know about because you maybe are not the Bitcoin or the crypto expert. 

Help somebody set expectations. I mean, again, this is a young fund that has come into an incredible booming market. Its three-year annualized return, which takes off part of that 300% year, is almost 90%. No one should expect that. 

But if you had to look out long term, acknowledging that this is high risk, but high reward—or high reward, maybe we haven’t seen the risk yet—how do you help somebody set expectations on a fund that has been this hot out of the box?

Todd Rosenbluth: So, I guess it’s worth us using the disclaimer: “past performance is not indicative of future results.” And to have a voice for that—the three-year track record in the past and a three-year track record going forward probably are not going to look exactly the same. You’d have to be a believer in cryptocurrency and the overall demand for cryptocurrency continuing to expand—that this is still in early days.

The price has the potential—I’ll go with potential—to move higher. There’s a limited supply. So, I think you need to manage your expectations and look forward and think of anything—I guess you would want to hope that a thematic ETF or an industry or a targeted ETF like this can outperform the broader S&P 500, which is likely the core part of your equity portfolio, and maybe hope that it’s going to have a magnitude of that.

Maybe, hopefully, you know, maybe double the returns of that in a good year. But also you have to be prepared that it could lose money; despite the fact that the equity markets go up, it is not going to move in lock-sync with one another. So it’s worth making sure that you’re not getting too far ahead and looking at that track record and only that track record.

Chuck Jaffe: It’s WGMI, the CoinShares Bitcoin Mining ETF, the ETF of the Week for the second time in its short history from Todd Rosenbluth, Head of Research at VettaFi. Todd, great stuff. We’ll see you again next week.

Todd Rosenbluth: See you soon, Chuck.

Chuck Jaffe: The ETF of the Week is a joint production of VettaFi and Money Life with Chuck Jaffe. Yeah, I’m Chuck Jaffe. It’d be great if you could check out my hour-long weekday podcast, which you can find at MoneyLifeShow.com, or on your favorite podcast app. 

If you want to check out your favorite ETFs, or maybe the thing that could become your next favorite ETF, go to VettaFi.com, where they’ve got plenty of information that will help you make better decisions. They’re on X at @Vetta_Fi. Todd Rosenbluth, their Head of Research, my guest here, he’s on X too; he’s @ToddRosenbluth

The ETF of the Week is here for you every Thursday. Make sure you don’t miss an episode by following along on your favorite podcast app. And we’ll be back next week with another ETF for you to consider. Until then, happy investing everybody!

For more news, information, and strategy, visit the CoinShares Crypto ETF Hub.

Note: This article was created in part through assistance from AI tools. The content has been thoroughly reviewed and edited by the author.