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CAUTIONARY STATEMENT CONCERNING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION
This Annual Report on Form 10-K (this “Report”) includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”), that involve substantial risks and uncertainties. The matters discussed throughout this Report that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expect,” “plan,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “predict,” “potential” or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. All statements (other than statements of historical fact) included in this Report that address activities, events or developments that will or may occur in the future, including such matters as movements in the digital asset markets, the Trust’s operations, the Sponsor’s plans and references to the Trust’s future success and other similar matters, are forward-looking statements. These statements are only predictions. Actual events or results may differ materially. These statements are based upon certain assumptions and analyses the Sponsor has made based on its perception of historical trends, technology developments regarding the use of ether and other digital assets, including the systems used by the Sponsor and the Trust’s Ethereum Custodian in their provision of services to the Trust, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors appropriate in the circumstances. Whether or not actual results and developments will conform to the Sponsor’s expectations and predictions, however, is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including the special considerations discussed in this Report, including in Part I, Item 1A. “Risk Factors” and other SEC filings by the Trust, as well as general economic, market and business conditions, changes in laws or regulations, including those concerning taxes, made by governmental authorities or regulatory bodies, and other economic and political developments. Consequently, all the forward-looking statements made in this Report are qualified by these cautionary statements, and there can be no assurance that actual results or developments the Sponsor anticipates will be realized or, even if substantially realized, that they will result in the expected consequences to, or have the expected effects on, the Trust’s operations or the value of its Shares. None of the Trust, the Sponsor, or the Trustee or their respective affiliates is under a duty to update any of the forward-looking statements to conform such statements to actual results or to a change in the Sponsor’s expectations or predictions.
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Invesco Galaxy Ethereum ETF (the “Trust”) is a Delaware statutory trust formed on September 27, 2023, pursuant to the Delaware Statutory Trust Act (“DSTA”). The Trust continuously issues common shares representing fractional undivided beneficial interest in and ownership of the Trust (“Shares”). The Trust operates pursuant to its Second Amended and Restated Declaration of Trust and Trust Agreement, dated as of June 21, 2024 (the “Trust Agreement”). CSC Delaware Trust Company, a Delaware trust company, is the Delaware trustee of the Trust (the “Trustee”). The Trust is managed and controlled by Invesco Capital Management LLC (the “Sponsor”). On June 17, 2024, Invesco Ltd., subject to certain conditions, purchased 4,000 Shares (the “Initial Seed Shares”) in exchange for $100,000, which comprised the initial purchase of the Trust’s Shares. The Trust commenced trading on the Cboe BZX Inc. (the “Exchange”) on July 23, 2024. The Trust has an unlimited number of shares authorized for issuance.
The Trust’s investment objective is to reflect the performance of the spot price of ether as measured using the Lukka Prime Ethereum Reference Rate (the “Benchmark”), less the Trust’s expenses and other liabilities.
In seeking to achieve its investment objective, the Trust will hold ether. The Trust is passively managed and the Sponsor does not actively manage the ether held by the Trust. This means that the Sponsor does not sell ether at times when its price is high or acquire ether at low prices in the expectation of future price increases. It also means that the Sponsor does not make use of any of the hedging techniques available to professional ether investors to attempt to reduce the risks of losses resulting from price changes.
Coinbase Custody Trust Company, LLC (the “Ethereum Custodian”) will hold all of the Trust’s ether on the Trust’s behalf as Ethereum Custodian. The Ethereum Custodian will keep the private keys associated with the Trust’s ether in a “cold storage” environment where the private keys are generated and secured (the “Prime Custody Vault”). The Trust intends to conduct its regular ether transactions, including in connection with creation and redemption transactions and selling ether to pay the Trust’s expenses, directly from the Trust’s Prime Custody Vault in over-the-counter transactions directly with counterparties selected by the Execution Agent. While the Trust does not expect to utilize the services of Coinbase, Inc. (“Coinbase” or the “Prime Broker”), from time to time, the Trust’s ether may be maintained in a trading account (the “Trading Balance”), in connection with certain transactions where the Execution Agent may elect to transact through the Prime Broker, an affiliate of the Ethereum Custodian. The Trust’s ether will be maintained by the Ethereum Custodian and Coinbase in accounts that are required to be segregated from the assets held by the Ethereum Custodian or Coinbase as principal and, when held in the Prime Custody Vault, the assets of their other customers.
The Trust values its Shares each day when the Exchange is open for regular trading (a “Business Day”) as of 4:00 p.m. ET. The value of ether held by the Trust is determined based on the estimated fair market value (“FMV”) price for ether, reflecting the execution price of ether on its principal market as determined each day by Lukka Inc., an independent third-party digital asset data company (the “Benchmark Provider”).
The Trust offers Shares only to certain eligible financial institutions (“Authorized Participants”) in one or more blocks of 5,000 Shares (“Creation Baskets”) based on the quantity of ether attributable to each Share of the Trust.
Ether and the Ethereum Network
Ether is a digital asset, also referred to as a digital currency or cryptocurrency, which serves as the unit of account on the open-source, decentralized, peer-to-peer Ethereum network (“Ethereum” or “Ethereum network”). Ether may be used to pay for goods and services, including to provide “gas” in connection with executing specific operations on the Ethereum network, stored for future use, or converted to a fiat currency, such as the U.S. dollar, at rates determined on digital asset trading platforms, or in individual end-user-to-end-user transactions under a barter system. In addition, ether is used to compensate node operators on the Ethereum network for using computational resources to confirm transactions and secure the network. Furthermore, the Ethereum network also allows users to write and implement smart contracts—that is, general-purpose code that executes on every computer in the network and can instruct the transmission of information and value based on a sophisticated set of logical conditions. Using smart contracts, users can create markets, store registries of debts or promises, represent the ownership of property, move funds in accordance with conditional instructions and create digital assets other than ether on the Ethereum network. Smart contract operations are executed on the Ethereum Blockchain in exchange for payment of ether. The Ethereum network is one of a number of projects intended to expand blockchain use beyond just a peer-to-peer money system. The value of ether is not backed by any government, corporation, or other identified body.
The value of ether is determined in part by the supply, of and demand for, ether in the markets for exchange that have been organized to facilitate the trading of ether. Ether is the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization behind bitcoin. Ether is maintained on the Ethereum network. No single entity owns or operates the Ethereum network. The Ethereum network is accessed through software and governs ether’s creation and movement. The source code for the Ethereum network is open-source, and anyone can contribute to its development.
The Ethereum software source code allows for the creation of decentralized applications (“DApps”) that are supported by a transaction protocol referred to as “smart contracts,” which includes the cryptographic operations that verify and secure ether transactions. A smart contract operates by a predefined set of rules (i.e., “if/then statements”) that allows it to automatically execute code the same way on any Ethereum node on the network. Such actions taken by the predefined set of rules are not necessarily contractual in nature but are intended to eliminate the arbitration of a third party for carrying out code execution on behalf of users, making the system decentralized, while empowering developers to create a wide range of applications layering together different smart contracts. Although there are many alternatives, the Ethereum network is the oldest and largest smart contract platform in terms of market cap, availability of decentralized applications, and development activity. Smart contracts can be utilized across several different applications ranging from art to finance. Currently, one of the most popular applications is the use of smart contracts for underpinning the operability of decentralized financial services (“DeFi”), which consist of numerous highly interoperable protocols and applications. DeFi is believed by some to offer many opportunities for innovation and to have the potential to create an open, transparent, and immutable financial infrastructure, with democratized access.
Because the Ethereum network has no central authority, the release of updates to the network’s source code by developers does not guarantee that the updates will be automatically adopted by the other participants. Users and validators must accept any changes made to the source code by downloading the proposed modification and that modification is effective only with respect to those users and validators who choose to download it. As a practical matter, a modification to the source code becomes part of the Ethereum network only if it is accepted by participants that collectively have a majority of the processing power on the Ethereum network.
If a modification is accepted by only a percentage of users and miners, a division will occur such that one network will run the pre-modification source code and the other network will run the modified source code. Such a division is known as a “fork.” A fork may be intentional, such as the fork that transitioned the Ethereum network from a proof-of-work consensus mechanism to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism (the “Merge”). This means that instead of being required to solve complex mathematical problems validators are required to stake ether.
In the event of a hard fork of the Ethereum network, the Sponsor will instruct the Trust to immediately and irrevocably disclaim all rights to the ether, cash or other assets or rights received as a result of a hard fork or airdrop in respect of ether (“IR Assets”) so created. As a result, shareholders will not receive the benefits of any hard fork or airdrop. Ether is the only digital asset that will be held by the Trust. In the event the Trust seeks to change its treatment of Incidental Rights or IR Assets, an application would need to be filed with the SEC by the Exchange seeking approval to amend its listing rules.