ARKB vs BITB: the fee difference is real, the spread numbers aren’t

On expense ratio, BITB is one basis point cheaper than ARKB – 0.20% against 0.21%, according to btcetfcalc.com, crypto.news, Synapse Trading and CoinCodex. On spread and on fund-specific tracking error, none of those four sources gives a number for either fund, despite several of them naming spread as a reason to prefer one over the other. The one number every source agrees on Four independent outlets – btcetfcalc.com, crypto.news, Synapse Trading and CoinCodex – all list the same pair of figures: ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) charges an annual expense ratio of 0.21%, and the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB) charges 0.20%. Synapse Trading’s page, last updated 3 July 2026, places both funds at the cheap end of the US spot bitcoin ETF field, well below Grayscale’s GBTC at 1.50%, a figure also confirmed by crypto.news. That single basis point is the only figure in this comparison that all four sources independently corroborate. What the expense ratio actually costs, worked through An expense ratio is deducted from the fund’s assets over the course of a year, not billed to the holder directly – which is why each fund’s bitcoin-per-share ratio only ever declines between filings, never rises, as btcetfcalc.com notes in its methodology. According to btcetfcalc.com, ARKB held 0.0003316 BTC per share as of 19 August 2026, per a snapshot of ARK 21Shares’ own daily holdings file. The same site’s snapshot of Bitwise’s own trust holdings page shows BITB holding 0.0005427 BTC per share as of 17 August 2026 – a different ratio because the funds have different share prices, not because one is a better tracker. crypto.news ran the compounding arithmetic on a flat $100,000 position held for five and ten years, isolating the fee effect from any price movement in bitcoin. Over five years, in an article published 19 August 2026, it calculates BITB’s 0.20% fee eating $996, leaving $99,004, against ARKB’s 0.21% fee eating $1,046, leaving $98,954 – a $50 difference. Over ten years the gap widens only slightly: BITB’s fees total $1,982 against ARKB’s $2,080, a $98 difference. For comparison, the same crypto.news piece gives two different ten-year GBTC fee totals for a $100,000 position: its summary states approximately $14,017, while the body of the article, working through a step-by-step table, puts the figure at $14,093. crypto.news does not reconcile the two numbers within its own article; both are crypto.news’s figures, not this page’s calculation. Separately, btcetfcalc.com’s own fee calculator, run over a five-year horizon on the investment amount and holding period a user selects, shows ARKB accumulating $105 in fees against BITB’s $100 – a $5 gap. The site’s FAQ frames the same comparison on a $10,000 investment as a difference of roughly $1 per year.