Winklevoss Files for Spot Zcash ETF With WINK Ticker

Winklevoss Asset Services filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Oct 6 for a spot Zcash exchange-traded fund that would trade on Nasdaq under the ticker WINK. The fund would hold ZEC directly rather than through futures or other derivatives, according to Unchained, which reviewed the S-1. Crypto Briefing confirmed the same filing date and ticker in its own Oct 6 report.

"The proposed fund would charge a 0.25% fee and names Zcash treasury company Cypherpunk Technologies as its ecosystem partner," Unchained wrote in its summary of the filing. The 0.25 percent annual sponsor fee would accrue daily in ZEC, and Gemini Trust Company, described in the filing as an affiliate of the sponsor, would keep the coins in segregated cold storage addresses.

If approved and launched, WINK would become the second U.S. fund offering direct ZEC exposure. Grayscale began trading its Zcash ETF, ticker ZCSH, on NYSE Arca on Aug 25 after converting its older Zcash Trust, a history both outlets recount in their filing coverage. By Sept 8 Grayscale said the fund held more than $500 million, with about $100 million of that from a subsidiary of its parent company Digital Currency Group.

The fee gap between the two products is wide. Grayscale charges 2.5 percent on ZCSH, ten times the 0.25 percent figure in the Winklevoss filing, Crypto Briefing noted. Lower fees do not decide the contest on their own, since the incumbent holds an asset head start and months of trading history, but the difference gives the challenger a clear line to sell.

What the filing contains

The trust names Cypherpunk Technologies, a Nasdaq-listed company that keeps ZEC in its treasury, as its Zcash ecosystem partner. Under that agreement Cypherpunk may help with coinholder polling and voting and advise on technical changes to the network. Winklevoss Capital, the investment firm Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss started in 2012, led a $58.88 million private placement last October in Leap Therapeutics, the biotech company that later renamed itself Cypherpunk, according to the filing summary Unchained published.

Winklevoss Capital funds have signaled interest through affiliates in buying as much as $100 million of WINK shares. The S-1 says those indications are not binding agreements or commitments to purchase, so the figure shows intent rather than secured demand, per the same summary. Several details remain blank in the preliminary prospectus, including the pricing benchmark, the administrator and the seed investor.

Creation and redemption would run on a cash model. Authorized participants hand over dollars rather than tokens when new shares are created, and the fund itself handles buying the underlying ZEC. Custody would go to Gemini, the twins' own crypto firm, which has supported ZEC trading and storage since 2018, according to the same report.

Risk disclosures in the filing dwell on a software scare from earlier this year. A Shielded Labs researcher found a flaw in the Orchard shielded pool in late May that could have allowed counterfeit ZEC to be minted inside that pool, and developers shipped an emergency upgrade in early June. The team has said there is no evidence the bug was exploited, yet the S-1 warns there is no cryptographic method to determine conclusively whether the flaw was used before the fix, in that account of the filing.

The regulatory backdrop shifted in January. That month the SEC closed a review of Zcash-related matters without taking enforcement action, which removed a cloud that had hung over privacy-coin products, Crypto Briefing wrote. Grayscale's August listing followed, and the Winklevoss filing now tests whether a second issuer can join the same shelf.

History counsels patience. In March 2017 the SEC disapproved a Bats BZX Exchange proposal to list the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust, an earlier bid by the same founders for a crypto fund, as recalled in the coverage. An S-1 starts the process rather than finishing it, and the shared family tree between sponsor and custodian could draw questions about conflict management during review.

A direct read of the S-1 on the SEC site was not possible at publication time, since the filing page returned an access error when opened. The details above rest on what the two outlets confirmed from the document, including the ticker, venue, fee, custodian and partner terms. The filing's next public marker will be any SEC response or amendment, neither of which had appeared as of Oct 6.