ProShares’ Bitcoin Futures ETF Underperforms BTC This Year: K33 Research

The underperformance stemmed from costs associated with the fund’s structure. BITO does not buy tokens, instead it holds BTC futures contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). The fund must roll over every month the contract expires, making it sensitive to price differences between terms. If the next month’s contract trades at a premium to the nearest expiration — a phenomenon known as contango and typical during a bull market — over an enduring period, the fund will accumulate losses due to “contango bleed.”