Grayscale’s Chainlink ETF Sinks to $72M After LINK’s 18% Slide

Grayscale filed a Form 10-Q with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its Chainlink Trust exchange-traded fund (ETF) on August 7, disclosing $72.2 million in net assets after a rough second quarter for LINK.

For a single-asset trust like GLNK, there’s no diversification cushion since the fund’s fortunes move exactly as LINK’s price does, for better or worse.

GLNK’s launch was strong by crypto-ETF standards. The fund pulled in $41 million in inflows on its first trading day, pushing assets under management to roughly $64 million within 48 hours. By April, AUM had climbed further to about $73 million, and some analysts projected the fund could reach $150 million to $300 million in a base case by mid-2026, with a bullish scenario running as high as $400 million to $600 million.

Those projections haven’t played out as the Q2 filing puts net assets at $72.2 million, essentially flat with April’s figure and well short of even the conservative growth case. That’s not because investors pulled money out (since the LINK token count held steady all quarter) but simply because new inflows got absorbed by the 18% price decline.

One number in the filing that hasn’t moved is the sponsor’s fee. Grayscale charges 0.35% annually on GLNK’s assets, a rate it locked in when the trust converted to an ETF in December 2025 (down from the 2.5% it charged accredited investors under the old private-trust structure).

Grayscale also waived a portion of that fee through early March 2026 to smooth the transition, a pattern it has used across its other trust-to-ETF conversions. For the six months ended June 30, GLNK’s sponsor’s fees totaled roughly $136,000 against the fund’s average net assets, consistent with the stated 0.35% annual rate. It’s a small number next to the $16.4 million quarterly paper loss, but it shows how thin these single-asset crypto funds run.