BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) and iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) crossed $60 billion in combined assets during the first quarter, according to disclosures summarized by CryptoSlate. Total fee revenue from the two funds came to roughly $42 million for the period, a number that looks small next to the headline AUM and almost invisible next to the firm's $7 trillion ETF book.
The pair are now BlackRock's fastest products to hit those AUM thresholds in ETF history, but the economics tell a quieter story.
Why $42M is the right number to focus on
IBIT charges 0.25% and ETHA charges 0.25%, both with promotional waivers that have already lapsed. On an annualized basis, $60 billion of AUM at a quarter-percent yields about $150 million a year of gross revenue. Q1 came in at $42 million because average AUM during the quarter sat below the $60 billion exit figure, with February's drawdown pulling balances lower for several weeks.
For context, BlackRock's total Q1 base fee and securities lending revenue ran north of $4 billion. The crypto ETFs contributed roughly 1% of that. They are also the lowest-margin large products on the iShares shelf, since spot crypto wrappers do not lend out the underlying asset and therefore earn no securities-lending uplift.
Scale without margin
The $42 million figure underlines a structural feature of the spot crypto ETF market: distribution wins, but the per-dollar economics are thin. Issuers that built crypto franchises in the 1990s and 2000s, like Grayscale with GBTC at 1.5%, learned the same thing in reverse when fee compression arrived in 2024. Morgan Stanley's MSBT now sits at 0.14%, which suggests the floor on this product category is still moving down.
For BlackRock, the trade-off works because the firm sells the rest of its shelf alongside IBIT. Advisors who add a 1-3% Bitcoin sleeve also tend to add fixed income iShares, factor ETFs, and core equity exposures, which carry higher net margins. The crypto wrappers are a top-of-funnel product. The fees they generate are not the point.
For competitors with narrower distribution, the math does not work the same way. Smaller issuers cannot subsidize a 0.25% Bitcoin product with a $1.2 trillion bond ETF franchise next door. That is part of why the spot ETF tape has consolidated around BlackRock and Fidelity, with the rest of the cohort fighting for tens of millions in AUM rather than tens of billions.
What this means for the next round of crypto ETFs
The $42 million print lands as the SEC continues to weigh applications for single-name crypto ETFs and staked variants. BlackRock's own staked ETH product, ETHB, is filed at 0.18% with Coinbase as staking partner, a structure that lets the issuer return validator yield to shareholders while keeping the management fee in the same range as the spot wrappers.
If the staked product launches in 2026, BlackRock will collect a similar quarter-percent on a smaller pool of AUM, plus a share of staking rewards. That stack moves the per-fund economics modestly higher but does not change the basic picture: spot crypto ETFs are scale plays, not fee plays.
For Japan, where JPX is targeting 2027 for its first Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, the BlackRock numbers are a useful benchmark. A successful launch can pull tens of billions in AUM within a year. It will not, on its own, build a fee franchise.
Bitcoin sat at $77,910 as of May 1, 2026, with the broader market reading Neutral at 44 on the Fear and Greed index. ETF flow data from the past two weeks has shown several outflow days, including a $263 million Monday print in mid-April, which means Q2 average AUM is likely to come in flat or lower if prices do not recover.
Overview
BlackRock's spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs crossed $60 billion in combined assets in Q1 and produced about $42 million in fee revenue over the period. That sounds like a milestone and an underperformance at the same time, and both readings are correct. The franchise wins on scale and on cross-sell, not on per-fund economics. For the next wave of crypto ETF launches, in the US and abroad, the signal is the same: race for assets, not for fees.
