This New Bitcoin Futures ETF Could Be Pulling All-Nighters

Wall Street has a new nighttime routine, and it’s not about remembering to wear a retainer.

A new ETF would hold bitcoin products only during overnight hours after the markets close, shifting into short-term US Treasuries during the day, according to a filing last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The goal is to capitalize on bitcoin’s performance during the night and slumps during the day. The strategy, called the Nicholas Bitcoin and Treasuries AfterDark ETF (NGHT), is the latest intersection of digital assets and traditional finance. But some experts warned that the fund may let traders take advantage of the predictable and forced buys and sells.

“[W]e took a 24/7 permissionless asset and somehow invented a night-shift ETF for it,” a crypto influencer wrote on X using the handle Blackthorne. “The real alpha is not owning time slices of bitcoin, it’s front‑running the tourists who think they can.”

Bitcoin After Dark

The idea behind the strategy is that investors would have higher returns by only trading bitcoin assets at night. For example, if an investor held the iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) only during after-hours trading, performance would be up 222% since January of last year, according to data from Bespoke Investment Group. In the same filing, Nicholas Financial also proposed a fund that would factor in time of day to its trading strategy, called the Nicholas Bitcoin Tail ETF (BHDG).

The company’s other funds, however, have had mixed results this year:

• FIAX, a fixed-income alt fund, is down 4%.
• GIAX, a global equity and income fund, has declined by 11%.
• BLOX, a crypto income ETF, has lost 1%.

Crypto All Day, Every Day. Crypto strategies — from memecoin funds to crypto indexes — are flourishing under a new, laxer regulatory environment, with the SEC recently signaling its support for new spot crypto products.

“I think the industry is maturing,” head of sector and industry research at VettaFi Roxanna Islam told ETF Upside. “Advisors and investors are seeing the value of diversification within the crypto space, not just using it to make single asset bets. So issuers are starting to look to diversify more among their crypto holdings.”