VanEck today launched the first US spot BNB exchange-traded fund on Nasdaq, trading under ticker VBNB. The ETF charges a 0.39% sponsor fee and uses Anchorage Digital Bank as custodian, with assets held in cold storage. The move gives institutional investors a regulated way to gain exposure to BNB, the native token of BNB Chain — a network that now handles roughly 40% of global stablecoin transactions.
ETF details and custody
The product is straightforward: a pure spot BNB ETF, no derivatives or leverage. Anchorage Digital Bank, a federally chartered crypto bank, secures the underlying assets offline. VanEck first filed for the fund in May 2025, so the approval process took about 13 months. Grayscale also filed its own BNB ETF application in January 2026, but that one hasn't been approved yet.
Why BNB Chain now
VanEck cited BNB Chain's network activity as a key reason for launching. The chain records over 14 million transactions per day and more than 2.5 million daily active users. On the real-world asset (RWA) front, BNB Chain holds $3.67 billion in tokenized assets — second only to Ethereum — and RWA transfer volume jumped 121.62% in the past month to $2.53 billion. The number of RWA holders also climbed 68.47%, to 77,155.
Stablecoin numbers are even bigger. In March, BNB Chain accounted for $231.9 billion in stablecoin transfer volume and 68.53 million holders. Both figures rose roughly 9% to 10% over 30 days.
Institutional interest heats up
Grayscale's head of research, Zach Pandl, recently named BNB Chain as one of the top ecosystems likely to capture institutional flows after the CLARITY Act passes — alongside Ethereum and Solana. Grayscale's internal research also lists BNB Chain as a top DeFi ecosystem based on total value locked and application activity. Whether the pending Grayscale ETF gets the green light later in 2026 is the next open question.
