The crypto trading firm's new Crypto Core3 ETF — ticker BESO — charges a 1 per cent fee, rebalances weekly, and earns staking rewards on Ethereum and Solana holdings.
GSR, the crypto trading and market-making firm that has operated since 2013, listed its first exchange-traded fund on Nasdaq on Tuesday — a product that bundles bitcoin, ether and solana into a single actively managed wrapper and passes staking yields through to shareholders.
The fund trades under the ticker BESO and charges a management fee of 1 per cent, placing it at the higher end of the crypto ETF fee spectrum but below the 1.5 per cent that several single-asset competitors charged at launch. Framework Digital Advisors serves as the registered investment adviser. GSR's own research team drives the allocation decisions, rebalancing the portfolio weekly based on what the firm describes as "research-driven signals" — a phrase that, in practice, means the same quantitative and macro analysis GSR already applies to its proprietary trading book.
"GSR has spent over a decade building efficient crypto markets, and with Core3, we are extending that expertise into a broader range of investors," said CEO Xin Song. The positioning is deliberate: GSR is not pitching BESO as a passive index product but as an active bet on the firm's ability to time rotations between the three largest proof-of-stake and proof-of-work assets in the market.
The staking component is what distinguishes BESO from the handful of multi-asset crypto funds that have filed or launched in 2026. By staking its ETH and SOL holdings, the fund generates yield that accrues to the net asset value — a feature that spot bitcoin ETFs, which hold only a non-yielding asset, structurally cannot offer. Andy Baehr, GSR's managing director of asset management, framed the product around three investor concerns: asset selection, yield generation, and portfolio positioning as markets evolve. The unstated implication is that a buy-and-hold bitcoin-only allocation is leaving money on the table.
The launch arrives in a crowded field. Since the SEC approved spot bitcoin ETFs in January 2024, the market has expanded rapidly through spot ether funds, single-asset altcoin ETFs, and now basket products. Morgan Stanley, Bitwise and 21Shares have all launched competing funds in 2026, though most are passively managed and lack the staking yield feature. Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart has predicted that basket ETFs will become one of the fastest-growing crypto ETF categories, a thesis that BESO is explicitly designed to test.
GSR's transition from market maker to asset manager mirrors a broader trend in crypto's institutional layer. Firms that built their businesses providing liquidity and OTC execution — GSR, Wintermute, Jump Crypto before its retreat — are finding that the infrastructure they built for trading translates into fund management, where the same skills in execution, risk management and market microstructure determine performance. The ETF wrapper just makes the product accessible through a standard brokerage account rather than requiring a crypto exchange relationship.
The 1 per cent fee will face pressure. BlackRock's iShares bitcoin ETF won the single-asset race partly by undercutting competitors on price; if basket ETFs follow the same trajectory, GSR may need to compress its margin to defend market share. The firm's bet is that active management and staking income justify the premium — that investors will pay more for a fund that promises to do more than simply hold three tokens in a fixed ratio.
No specific allocation percentages were disclosed at launch, which is consistent with the actively managed structure; the portfolio's composition will shift with GSR's views on relative value across the three assets. The initial holdings are weighted toward bitcoin, according to the fund's Nasdaq listing documentation, with ether and solana comprising smaller but meaningful positions.
The fund opened for trading on Tuesday morning. Early volumes were modest — unsurprising for a first-day launch in a crowded ETF market — but the product's real test will come over the next quarter, as advisers and allocators evaluate whether the active management and staking yield deliver returns that justify the fee differential over cheaper passive alternatives.
