Ether’s Exit: A Portfolio Shift

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The numbers arrived like a cold rain. Apeiron Capital, a name that sounded like something out of a forgotten myth, quietly unloaded its entire stake in the iShares Ethereum Trust ETF. Eight-point-nine-nine million, give or take a rounding error. A tidy sum, enough to make a dent in a smaller economy. It wasn’t a shout, more of a sigh, but in this business, sighs can be louder than bombs.

The Fade

They dumped 285,400 shares. Every last one. Zeroed out. Like erasing a debt, or a memory. The transaction happened in the fourth quarter of ’25, a period already looking like a bad dream for anyone holding digital promises. The fund’s holdings in ETHA? Dust. The net effect, after the market had its say, was just shy of nine million. A clean break. Almost elegant.

What They Kept

Apeiron wasn’t going to the hills. They redistributed the weight, shifted the odds. Their remaining portfolio looked like a carefully curated collection of operating businesses. On Holding, Summit Therapeutics, QFIN. Names that suggested something tangible, something you could kick. Here’s the breakdown:

  • NYSE:ONON: $36.99 million (42.8% of AUM)
  • NASDAQ:SMMT: $22.90 million (26.5% of AUM)
  • NASDAQ:QFIN: $19.80 million (22.9% of AUM)
  • NYSEMKT:KWEB: $4.26 million (4.9% of AUM)
  • NYSE:VRT: $2.53 million (2.9% of AUM)

As of January 30th, ETHA was trading at twenty-oh-one, a price that felt more like a plea than a valuation. Down seventeen-point-seven percent year-over-year. Underperforming the S&P by a margin that suggested a different universe. The one-year losses? They’d topped thirty percent, and the scent of a wider market rout hung heavy in the air.

The Instrument

Here’s the mechanics. The iShares Ethereum Trust ETF, with ten-point-three billion under management, aimed to give investors a slice of ether’s price action without the mess of wallets and exchanges. A neat trick. A way to participate in the digital carnival without getting your hands dirty. The price on January 30th? Twenty-oh-one. It was a promise wrapped in volatility.

The ETF’s pitch was simple: exposure to ether, the lifeblood of the Ethereum blockchain, delivered through a regulated, exchange-traded package. It lowered the barriers to entry, offered transparency, and charged a fee. A business model, really. Nothing more, nothing less.

Reading the Tea Leaves

Ether’s price has always been a restless ghost. Tripled between April and September of last year, then lost half its value. A brutal sell-off in the last week. But selling out of an Ethereum ETF isn’t a referendum on blockchain’s future. It’s a judgment call. Where does capital work hardest right now? It’s about probabilities, not prophecies.

ETHA offered regulated exposure, yes. But it was a single-asset vehicle, tied to the whims of price. And over the past year, those whims had been cruel. The NAV fell over eleven percent in ’25, and recent losses pushed one-year declines past thirty percent. Volatility surged, risk appetite cooled, and patience became a costly luxury. A quarter-percent sponsor fee, no income, no distributions. It was a slow bleed.

Apeiron’s remaining portfolio, however, was different. Operating businesses. Returns hinged on execution, not sentiment. Clearing out a crypto position freed capital for names where fundamentals mattered. A focused portfolio. Sometimes, simplicity is the best defense. In this business, you learn to bet on what you can understand. And right now, that wasn’t ether’s ghost.

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2026-02-03 15:23