REX Debuts Income ETF Tied to Coinbase, Strategy & Tech

REX Shares has debuted a new income ETF that wraps leveraged covered-call strategies on Coinbase, Strategy, and seven other high-profile equities into a single ticker on Cboe Global Markets. The fund, listed under the symbol GIF, seeks to distribute weekly income derived from option premiums, giving investors diversified exposure across crypto-linked stocks, technology, AI, healthcare, and retail sectors.

What Is the GIF ETF and How Does It Work?

The GIF ETF is a multi-stock income fund that holds equal-weighted positions across nine of REX's existing single-stock Growth & Income ETFs. Each underlying fund targets roughly 1.25x leveraged exposure to its respective equity and writes covered calls on a portion of the portfolio to collect option premium income, according to the company's Thursday announcement.

Covered-call premiums refer to the upfront payments a fund receives for selling options on shares it already owns, generating income in exchange for capping some upside potential. All nine underlying ETFs aim to distribute those premiums to shareholders on a weekly basis.

The nine holdings span Nvidia (NVII), Tesla (TSII), Strategy (MSII), Coinbase (COII), Robinhood (HOII), Palantir (PLTI), CoreWeave (CWII), Eli Lilly (LLII), and Walmart (WMTI), covering crypto-adjacent equities alongside technology, artificial intelligence, healthcare, and retail names.

New Strategy-Linked Products Pile Up

The GIF launch arrives during a week packed with fresh allocations to Strategy-linked securities. On Wednesday, 21Shares introduced an exchange-traded product giving European investors access to STRC, Strategy's variable-rate perpetual preferred stock. That ETP began trading on Euronext Amsterdam under the ticker STRC NA on Thursday.

Also on Wednesday, Strategy disclosed that Prevalon Energy, an energy infrastructure firm, and Anchorage Digital, a crypto-focused digital asset bank, had directed portions of their corporate treasuries into STRC, though neither revealed the size of its allocation. Strategy describes STRC as a digital credit instrument carrying an 11.25% annual dividend, part of its broader push to issue fixed-income securities backed by its Bitcoin holdings.

How Large Is Strategy's Bitcoin Position?

Strategy holds 717,722 BTC, representing approximately 3.4% of Bitcoin's fixed 21 million supply, making it the largest corporate holder since it adopted a Bitcoin treasury strategy in August 2020. Despite robust demand for Strategy-linked securities, shares have dropped more than 60% over the past six months and roughly 50% over the past year, according to Yahoo Finance data.

Strategy has also earned the distinction of being the most heavily shorted large-cap US stock on Goldman Sachs' latest ranking, measured by short interest relative to market value. The persistent selling pressure underscores the tension between institutional appetite for Strategy-linked income products and broader skepticism about the company's leveraged Bitcoin bet amid recent price declines.