21Shares began trading physically backed Zcash and ether.fi products in Amsterdam and Paris on . Grayscale's U.S. Zcash fund is days away from a three-for-one share split.
Investors in Europe can now buy a fund backed by Zcash, a cryptocurrency built around optional privacy. They will pay about 10 times what bitcoin fund investors pay for the privilege, the same as buyers in the United States.
21Shares, a subsidiary of FalconX, listed two new exchange-traded products on Euronext Amsterdam and Euronext Paris on . The 21shares Zcash ETP trades under the ticker ZCASH, and the 21shares ether.fi ETP under ETHFI. Each carries an annual fee of 2.50%, and each is physically backed by its underlying token, held by third-party custodians.
That fee matches the 2.5% charged by Grayscale's Zcash fund, which trades in New York under the ticker ZCSH. BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust charges 0.25%.
"European investors want straightforward access to projects that are actually building useful technology," said Jasmin Muelhaupt, director of financial product development at 21Shares.
Zcash shares bitcoin's fixed supply of 21 million coins but adds shielded transactions, which use cryptography to hide the sender, receiver and amount. Users can choose whether to use them. 21Shares is pitching the product around financial privacy and security against future quantum computers. The ether.fi token gives exposure to a protocol that began in liquid restaking and is expanding into earning, borrowing, payments and spending.
The European launch comes as the U.S. fund grows. Grayscale's Zcash fund holds about $890 million in assets and is scheduled to split its shares three for one on . A split does not change the value of a holding, but it lowers the share price, which makes the fund easier to buy in round lots and can signal that the sponsor expects demand to keep coming.
The matching fees also mark where competition would show up first. If assets keep building on both sides of the Atlantic, a cheaper rival product would be the clearest sign that privacy coins have moved into the mainstream of crypto investing.
For now, the numbers to watch are assets in the new European products over their first weeks and whether ZCSH's split on brings a pickup in U.S. trading.