BlackRock’s head of digital assets says staking could be a ‘huge step change’ for ether ETFs

Appetite for ether ETFs has been tepid since their launch last July, but that could change if some of the regulatory wrinkles holding them back get “resolved,” according to Robert Mitchnick, head of digital assets at BlackRock.

There’s a widely held view that the success of ether ETFs has been “meh” compared to the explosive growth in funds tracking bitcoin, Mitchnick said at the Digital Asset Summit in New York City Thursday. Though he sees that as a “misconception,” he acknowledged that the inability to earn a staking yield on the funds is likely one thing holding them back.

“There’s obviously a next phase in the potential evolution of [ether ETFs],” he said. “An ETF, it’s turned out, has been a really, really compelling vehicle through which to hold bitcoin for lots of different investor types. There’s no question it’s less perfect for ETH today without staking. A staking yield is a meaningful part of how you can generate investment return in this space, and all the [ether] ETFs at launch did not have staking.”

Staking is a way for investors to earn passive yield on their cryptocurrency holdings by locking tokens up on the network for a period of time. It allows investors to put their crypto to work if they’re not planning to sell it anytime soon.

But Mitchnick doesn’t expect a simple fix.

“It’s not a particularly easy problem,” he explained. “It’s not as simple as … a new administration just green-lighting something and then boom, we’re all good, off to the races. There are a lot of fairly complex challenges that have to be figured out, but if that can get figured out, then it’s going to be sort of a step change upward in terms of what we see the activity around those products is.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission has historically viewed some staking services as potential unregistered securities offerings under the Howey Test – which is used to determine whether an asset is an investment contract and therefore, a security. But a more crypto friendly SEC is moving swiftly to reverse the damage done to the industry under the previous regime. Its newly formed crypto task force is scheduled to kick off a roundtable series Friday focused on defining the security status of digital assets.

Ether has been one of the most beaten up cryptocurrencies in recent months. It’s down more than 40% year to date as it has struggled with conflicting and difficult-to-comprehend narratives, weaker revenue since its last big technical upgrade and increasing competition from Solana. Standard Chartered this week slashed its price target on the coin by more than half.

Mitchnick said the negativity is “overdone.”

“ETH … at the second grade level is easier to define … but at the 10th grade level is a lot harder,” he said. “Second grade level: it’s a technology innovation story. … Beyond that, it does get a little more vast, a little more complicated. It’s about being a bet on blockchain adoption and innovation. That’s part of the thesis as we communicate it to clients.”

“There are three [use cases] that we focus on that have a lot of resonance with our client base: it’s a bet to some extent on tokenization, on stablecoin adoption, and on decentralized financing,” he added. “It does take a fair bit of education, and we’ve been on that journey, but it’s going to take more time.”

BlackRock is the issuer of the iShares Ethereum Trust ETF. It also has a tokenized money market fund, known as BUIDL, which it initially launched a year ago on Ethereum and has since expanded to several other networks including Aptos and Polygon.