Summary VanEck Bitcoin ETF offers direct, cost-efficient Bitcoin exposure, trading like a US stock with zero fees until January and low expenses thereafter. The ETF is highly liquid, tightly tracks Bitcoin with a 0.93 correlation, and securely holds assets in cold storage. Technical analysis shows a bullish flag pattern, suggesting significant upside potential with manageable downside risk for traders. I rate HODL a Strong Buy due to its structure, cost, and bullish setup—ideal for investors seeking pure Bitcoin exposure despite inherent volatility. The popularity of Bitcoin-tracking exchange-traded products has given rise to immensely improved access to cryptocurrencies for investors. Cryptos used to be far less accessible when it required a digital wallet, but with products like today’s topic – the VanEck Bitcoin ETF ( HODL ) – that is a thing of the past. HODL looks to be a terrific way to gain direct Bitcoin exposure very cheaply, and it trades like a US-listed stock. For me, this is a terrific Bitcoin fund, and I’m initiating at a Strong Buy. What is HODL? HODL is an ETF that seeks to track the performance of Bitcoin, less the fund’s expenses. It’s passive, so it doesn’t sell calls or use any other income-generating strategy, and it doesn’t trade in and out of positions trying to time the market. This is a true buy-and-hold Bitcoin fund. Fund website The fund takes investors money and buys Bitcoin, and then holds it in cold storage with a qualified custodian. That means the Bitcoin is safe, and it’s akin to a gold ETF holding physical gold. For now, expenses are actually nothing as HODL has a waiver period until next January, or the fund reaching $2.5 billion in assets. At that point, the fund is set to charge a fee of 20 basis points, so even after the waiver period has passed, this fund will be an extremely cost-efficient way to gain access to Bitcoin prices. Obviously, the risks are high. The fund tracks Bitcoin, so it’s quite volatile. It’s about 4X more volatile than the S&P 500, the standard deviation of its returns is huge, and it has zero diversification. However, while those things make it riskier, they also present lots of trading opportunities if that’s your game. If you’re extremely risk-averse, I suspect you wouldn’t be here reading this. On the plus side, HODL has tremendous liquidity . It has $1.6B in AUM, and trades about 770k shares, or $21M in daily volume. That’s enough for anyone but perhaps large institutions, so no concerns from my perspective there. All in all, HODL is a very well-constructed fund if you’re looking for Bitcoin exposure. Let’s take a look at the price chart now, and see if we should want to be exposed to Bitcoin. Bull flag presents a long opportunity HODL has done extremely well since the April bottom, as has most everything that is risk-oriented. But with Bitcoin once again knocking on the door to all-time highs, HODL is following suit. StockCharts The period since HODL’s high in May and now – about four weeks – has produced a pretty textbook pennant or flag formation. Whether it’s a pennant or flag is irrelevant; both are very bullish continuation patterns considering it follows a huge, steep uptrend. It is my belief that this pattern will resolve to the upside, and potentially quite significantly so. The “flagpole” was about $10 on HODL, so we’d measure a potential breakout to something like $40 on HODL should it come to fruition. The PPO is coming in for a centerline test, which resets momentum, and is common in consolidation patterns. The RSI is likewise testing the centerline again, and as long as the RSI doesn’t fall below 40 during this phase, HODL is very much in consolidation mode, not correction mode. On the downside, you can use the bottom end of the pennant formation as a stop, or you can use the upsloping 50-day SMA, in blue above. Either way, we’re looking at risk of a dollar or perhaps a bit more, against upside of potentially ~10X that ultimately. Finally, let’s take a look at the correlation of HODL to Bitcoin. This is critically important because as HODL portrays itself as a tracker of Bitcoin prices, this value should be exceedingly high. As it turns out, it is just that. StockCharts On a 20-day rolling basis, HODL’s correlation to Bitcoin is 0.93, and it’s often higher than that. Point being that if you want exposure to Bitcoin, HODL is a proven way to do that. Wrapping up I’ve arrived at a Strong Buy rating for HODL because it’s extremely well-constructed to deliver on its stated goal, it has no expenses for the time being and quite reasonable cost after that period ends, and it has a tremendously bullish pattern on the chart that looks to me as though it will resolve higher. HODL has a terrific Quant Rating as well, with the Risk profile being the factor holding it back. Seeking Alpha HODL is about as risky as Bitcoin, and like I said earlier, if that’s not your thing, you wouldn’t be here. HODL doesn’t generate any income, so if that’s your thing, there are other Bitcoin-related options. This one is about as pure-play as it gets for Bitcoin exposure. The risk/reward setup here is excellent, and I’m looking for HODL to resolve higher in the coming days or weeks.
