The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved the Bitwise Chainlink ETF for listing on NYSE Arca under the ticker CLNK, and NYSE Arca has separately certified in a letter to the SEC dated Jan. 13, 2026, that it has approved the listing and registration of the fund’s common shares, clearing the way for Bitwise’s first spot Chainlink ETF to begin trading on the New York exchange.
The product is structured as a single-asset trust that holds Chainlink tokens and is designed to give investors regulated stock market exposure to the price of (LINK) without requiring them to own or safeguard the cryptocurrency themselves.
The fund is the 2nd U.S. Chainlink ETF, after the launch of Grayscale’s GLNK product on NYSE Arca in December last year, and extends the wave of crypto exchange-traded products that began with spot Bitcoin and Ether funds.
ETF Structure and Key Terms
Bitwise, among the larger dedicated crypto asset managers with roughly $15 billion in assets, has pitched the Chainlink ETF as a bridge for institutions that are comfortable with exchange-listed securities but reluctant to manage wallets or private keys.
The Bitwise Chainlink ETF is a Delaware trust that holds Chainlink tokens as its only asset and aims to reflect their value after fees, with its shares structured to trade on NYSE Arca under the symbol CLNK, giving investors stock market access to Chainlink without dealing with the token directly. The fund values its holdings once each business day using a Chainlink dollar reference rate from CF Benchmarks, based on trading across major crypto exchanges in the hour before 4 in the afternoon New York time.
Shares will be created and redeemed only in blocks of 10,000, known as “baskets,” with Bitwise seeding the trust with 100,000 shares at $25 each, or $2.5 million in total, before trading begins. The sponsor charges a 0.34% annual fee on the fund’s Chainlink holdings but plans to waive that fee entirely for the first 3 months on up to $500 million in assets to help the product build scale.
Furthermore, Coinbase Custody Trust Company is appointed as custodian for Chainlink, holding the tokens in segregated accounts and largely in cold storage, while a separate cash custodian and administrator handle dollars and fund accounting. The prospectus also flags Bitwise’s intention to seek permission at a later stage to add staking as a secondary objective, although the trust will not stake LINK at launch.
The ETF is expected to begin trading on NYSE Arca in February, once Bitwise and the exchange complete the remaining operational steps following the SEC’s approval.
