Winklevoss Asset Services filed for a Zcash ETF on October 6, 2026, proposing a 0.25% annual fee — one-tenth of what Grayscale charges on its existing Zcash fund. The preliminary filing names Nasdaq as the listing venue and WINK as the ticker. The sponsor itself was formed on October 1, five days before the paperwork landed.
The timing is pointed. Grayscale's Zcash ETF, ZCSH, has bled roughly $218 million in assets since late September, and this is the first serious attempt to peel away its market.
Grayscale's bleeding streak
ZCSH held just over $1 billion on September 24. By October 5, that figure had fallen to $781.96 million. About $97 million of the drop came from actual withdrawals. The rest is price. ZEC itself traded lower over the stretch, and Grayscale's fund wore the markdown.
The flow data is worse than the headline number. Cumulative net inflows slid from $306.12 million to $209 million between September 24 and October 5. Investors pulled money in four of the fund's last five sessions, with daily outflows running between $27 million and $30 million from September 30 through October 2. ZCSH booked its first weekly outflow since launch at $93.6 million.
For the only ETF holding Zcash, that's an ugly first quarter of trading. The fund launched with fanfare and now faces a cheaper competitor filing while its own assets shrink.
What WINK would cost you
The fee gap is the whole pitch. On a $10,000 holding, the Winklevoss fund would cost $25 per year. The same position in ZCSH runs $250. That's not a rounding difference — it's a structural undercut, and Grayscale has no obvious answer for it short of cutting its own fee, which would hit revenue across its entire product line.
Winklevoss Capital Fund has signaled interest in buying up to $100 million of WINK shares, though the filing makes clear that interest is not binding. It's a show of skin in the game, not a commitment.
The custody conflict, in writing
Gemini Trust, founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, would custody the fund's ZEC. The filing lists this as a conflict of interest — a rare bit of candor in a preliminary registration statement. The same people who control the sponsor would also control the assets, and the SEC will want a closer look at how that relationship gets governed.
More basic questions remain open. The filing leaves the price benchmark, seed amount, and trading partners blank. The sponsor has no prior experience running a pooled investment fund. WINK can't trade until the SEC declares the registration effective and Nasdaq clears the listing, and neither is guaranteed.
Thirteen years later
The filing landed exactly 13 years after the Winklevoss twins dropped the first-ever application for a spot bitcoin ETF. That one took a decade to get approved. This one arrives into a very different regulatory climate, with a live competitor already trading and a fee war the brothers seem happy to start.
ZEC was near $1,342 at the time of writing, up 4.8% in 24 hours — a small bounce against a rough fortnight for the fund that holds it. The next concrete marker is the SEC's initial review of the WINK registration, which will determine whether the fee undercut ever reaches a shareholder.
