The trust would list on Nasdaq under the ticker WINK and create and redeem shares only for cash, which the prospectus itself warns can loosen the link between the share price and net asset value. Its transfer agent, administrator and cash custodian are still blank.
Winklevoss Asset Services has filed a registration statement for an exchange-traded fund that would hold Zcash, with the shares expected to list on Nasdaq under the ticker "WINK." The Form S-1 was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday under the name Winklevoss Zcash ETF.
The registrant is a Delaware trust, and EDGAR records the filing under registration number 333-299316. Cameron Winklevoss is named at the sponsor's Wilmington address. The prospectus is marked subject to completion and dated October 6, 2026, and the trust is registering an indeterminate number of shares.
The trust would pay its sponsor an annual unified fee of 0.25% of what the prospectus calls the trust's ZEC holdings, defined as the trust's ZEC plus any cash or other assets expressed in ZEC at the pricing benchmark price, less liabilities including accrued but unpaid fees. Gemini Trust Company, which the filing describes as an affiliate of the sponsor, would be the custodian and would hold all of the trust's ZEC.
That fee sits well below the one on the Zcash product already trading in the United States. The converted Grayscale trust charged 2.50% a year when it began trading in August, holding roughly 390,000 ZEC. At 0.25%, the Winklevoss filing proposes a tenth of that rate, though a sponsor fee in a registration statement is a proposal and can change before a fund reaches the market.
The creation mechanism is cash rather than in-kind. Shares would be issued and redeemed in baskets, and for a subscription the authorized participant supplies the cash needed to buy the ZEC that the basket represents, as calculated by the administrator. For a redemption, the sponsor arranges for the basket's ZEC to be sold and the cash proceeds distributed. The prospectus flags the cost of that design itself, saying the use of cash creations and redemptions "may adversely affect the arbitrage transactions by Authorized Participants intended to keep the price of the Shares closely linked to the price of ZEC," with the result that the share price may fall or otherwise diverge from net asset value.
The filing also describes an arrangement with Cypherpunk Technologies Inc., which would serve as the trust's "Zcash Ecosystem Partner." Under that agreement, the partner would provide services relating to the Zcash network and ecosystem that "may include assistance with coinholder polling and voting, guidance in connection with protocol and technical developments, and other related advisory services concerning Zcash matters." Zcash coinholder polling is live rather than theoretical: holders voted in September to keep bitcoin-style halvings, with nearly 2.4 million ZEC taking part and the result advisory rather than binding.
Several parts of the filing are still blank. The transfer agent, the administrator and the cash custodian each appear as a bracketed placeholder, as does the trust's employer identification number and the number of shares in a basket. The prospectus states there has been no public market for the shares.
Registration and listing are separate steps, and neither one starts trading on its own. The prospectus says the shares are expected to be listed subject to notice of issuance, and a registration statement takes effect only when the SEC declares it effective. MiningPool reported on Monday that Cboe can list 3x bitcoin and ether funds that cannot trade yet, the same gap viewed from the exchange side.
Zcash transactions can be shielded using zero-knowledge proofs that the prospectus says protect the amount as well as the sender and recipient, while unshielded transactions stay publicly viewable and can be used to disclose information selectively for regulatory compliance. The filing is dated the same day the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network withdrew its proposal to treat international crypto mixing as a class of transactions of primary money laundering concern.
Nothing in the registration statement commits the sponsor to launch. The trust has no fixed termination date, and the document sets out the terms on which shares could be offered rather than a date on which they will be.
