In the quarterly report covering the three months ended June 30, it is stated that the Grayscale Chainlink Trust ETF (GLNK) holds 10,030,901.11 $LINK tokens as its sole asset. At the close of the fund's primary market, this holding was valued at $72.2 million: the token count remained unchanged from the previous quarter, but their dollar value plummeted due to Chainlink's price drop.
Form 10-Q reports are standard disclosures that every U.S.-registered fund is required to file quarterly, and the GLNK documentation contains no new regulatory aspects. However, the figures presented reflect the situation of a token that has been struggling since institutional investors gained direct access to it. GLNK began trading on NYSE Arca on December 2, 2025, resulting in the conversion of a Delaware-based trust, which Grayscale had managed privately since 2020, into a fund whose shares can be purchased by anyone with a brokerage account.
The rapid launch of GLNK is tied to a rule change less than a year ago. In September 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved general listing standards for crypto exchange-traded products, allowing exchanges like NYSE Arca to list qualifying converted crypto trusts without the individual filing procedure that previously took the better part of a year. Grayscale leveraged this accelerated process to bring GLNK, along with several other single-asset converted trusts, to market within months.
A Difficult Quarter for $LINK
The most telling metric in the report is the token price at the end of the quarter, which was $7.25 (June 30), down from $8.77 at the time of the previous 10-Q filing in May. This is an 18% drop over three months, which reduced the trust's net asset value (NAV) per share to $6.38. Grayscale's own calculations show the scale of the losses: just this quarter, the company incurred an unrealized loss of approximately $16.4 million on its $LINK holding (even with an unchanged token count).
For a single-asset trust like GLNK, there is no diversification safety net, as the fund's fate hinges entirely on the price movement of $LINK—for better or worse.
A Growth Story That Stalled
By crypto ETF standards, the launch of GLNK was successful. On its first trading day, the fund attracted $41 million in inflows, causing its assets under management to grow to approximately $64 million within 48 hours. By April, assets under management (AUM) had risen to about $73 million, and some analysts projected that by mid-2026, the fund could reach $150–300 million in a base-case scenario, and $400–600 million in an optimistic scenario.
These projections have not materialized, as the second-quarter reporting shows net assets at $72.2 million, virtually unchanged from April's figure and significantly below even the most conservative growth scenario. This did not happen because investors withdrew funds (since the number of $LINK tokens remained stable throughout the quarter), but simply because new inflows were offset by the 18% price decline.
Lower Fees, Same Strategy
The only metric in the report that remained unchanged is the sponsor fee. Grayscale charges 0.35% annually on GLNK's assets—this rate was fixed when the trust converted to an ETF in December 2025 (compared to the 2.5% the company charged accredited investors under the previous private trust structure).
Grayscale also waived a portion of this fee until early March 2026 to smooth the transition—a scheme the company has used with other trust-to-ETF conversions. For the six months ended June 30, GLNK sponsor fees amounted to approximately $136,000 based on the fund's average net assets, aligning with the stated annual rate of 0.35%. This is a small amount compared to the $16.4 million quarterly paper loss, but it shows how difficult these single-asset crypto funds can be to operate.
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