The team at a crypto-focused, $10-billion-AUM asset manager in California are preparing to launch their fourth income ETF. The new fund also ties in with a famous meme stock.

On Tuesday (June 10), Hunter Horsley, CEO of Bitwise Asset Management [profile], and Jeff Park, head of alpha strategies, unveiled the launch of the Bitwise GME Option Income Strategy ETF (IGME on the NYSE Arca, Inc.). San Francisco-based Bitwise Investment Management, LLC (BIM) serves as the new fund's investment advisor.

IGME's inception date was Monday (June 9), and the new ETF comes with an expense ratio of 98 basis points. As of yesterday (June 12), the new fund had about $385,000 in AUM.

The Bitwise team lays claim to IGME being the first ever covered call ETF to be based on GameStop Corp. (GME). Like Bitwise's first three income ETFs (which launched earlier this spring), IGME is a single-stock covered call ETF, i.e. a fund designed to provide exposure to a specific individual stock (GME, in this case), combined with income generation via an options strategy. (In the 10 weeks since the Bitwise team launched their first three covered call ETFs, that trio has grown to more than $82 million in combined AUM.)

IGME's PM team is the same quartet that powers their three other covered call ETFs. That team includes:

Gayatri Choudhury, quantitative investment analyst;

Daniela Padilla, portfolio manager;

Jennifer Thornton, PM; and

Park himself.

The Bitwise team notes that the launch of IGME comes after the GameStop team revealed on on May 28, that the video game retailer has purchased more than $500 million in bitcoin.

Park describes GME as "a stock whose historic volatility and growth potential make it a strong fit for this approach," i.e. a covered call ETF.

"With IGME, investors now have access to an option income ETF based on an equity that sits at the intersection of retail investor popularity, a traditional revenue-generating business, and digital asset adoption," Park states.

Horsley puts the launch of IGME in the context of the Bitwise team's mission "to help investors gain access to the full range of opportunities emerging in crypto."

IGME is an actively managed, non-diversified series of the Bitwise Funds Trust. The new ETF's other service providers include:

the Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon) as administrator, custodian, dividend disbursing agent, fund accountant, and transfer agent;

Chapman and Cutler LLP as counsel;

ACA's Foreside Fund Services, LLC as distributor; and

KPMG LLP as independent accounting firm.

 

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