Hashdex is shutting down its U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund after the product amassed approximately $14.7 million in assets under management, according to a filing submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.

The crypto asset manager's Hashdex Bitcoin ETF (NYSE Arca: DEFI) will cease trading after the market closes on August 17 and will subsequently be delisted. Shareholders who remain invested in the fund at that point are expected to receive cash distributions on or around August 28, once the fund has sold its remaining Bitcoin holdings.

"Following the Last Trading Day, the Fund will liquidate its remaining Bitcoin holdings," the filing stated. "The Fund will no longer pursue its stated investment objective and will not engage in any business activities other than winding up its business and affairs, preserving the value of its assets, paying its liabilities, and distributing its remaining assets to shareholders."

Hashdex said the decision to liquidate followed an evaluation of multiple factors, including assets under management, trading liquidity, operating costs, investor interest, and the fund's role within the firm's broader product lineup. DEFI's $14.7 million in assets represented a fraction of the total held by U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, which collectively manage tens of billions of dollars, with funds from BlackRock and Fidelity alone accounting for the majority of inflows since the SEC's January 2024 approvals. The company noted that it continues to manage more than $200 million across investment products available to U.S. investors.

An exchange-traded fund, or ETF, allows investors to gain exposure to an asset—in this case Bitcoin—by purchasing shares that trade on a stock exchange. Because the ETF's price is correlated with the price of Bitcoin, the final cash payout to shareholders may differ from the fund's current value, as the price of the underlying asset can fluctuate during the liquidation process.

The closure comes more than two years after Hashdex entered the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF market, a period that began following the SEC's landmark approval of the first spot Bitcoin ETFs in January 2024.

The firm had previously operated a Bitcoin futures ETF under the DEFI ticker, which launched in September 2022. In August 2023, Hashdex converted that futures product into a spot Bitcoin ETF holding roughly 5,500 Bitcoin.

Hashdex later sought to broaden its U.S. offerings by proposing a combined Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF, but the SEC delayed a decision on that proposal in August 2024. The fate of that pending application remains unclear following the liquidation of the firm's standalone spot Bitcoin product.