Neither Vanguard Nor Fidelity Sells a Crypto Index Fund

If you searched for a Vanguard crypto index fund, you did so for a specific reason. You want broad market exposure, cheaply, from a firm whose whole identity is cap-weighted indexing and not charging you much for it. That instinct is correct. The product does not exist.

Vanguard does not offer a crypto index fund. It does not offer a crypto ETF, a crypto mutual fund, crypto custody, or crypto staking, and it has said it has no plans to launch any of them.

Fidelity is further along and still not where you think. It offers a spot bitcoin fund and a spot ether fund, both single-asset. It offers a direct crypto trading platform. And it offers an ETF with "Crypto" in the name that holds no cryptocurrency whatsoever, which is the single most expensive misunderstanding in this search.

Neither firm sells the thing you were looking for. But as of 2 December 2025, Vanguard will let you buy somebody else's version in a Vanguard brokerage account, and that changes the practical answer entirely.

Here is exactly what is available on each platform, the fund that actually matches the index philosophy you came for, and the one product in this space you should be careful not to buy by accident.

TL;DR

• Vanguard has no crypto index fund and no plans for one. It has said so publicly.
• Since 2 December 2025 Vanguard allows third-party crypto ETFs and mutual funds on its brokerage platform, reversing a ban it imposed in January 2024. More than 50 million clients were affected by that one decision.
• Fidelity offers FBTC (bitcoin) and FETH (ether), both single-asset. No multi-asset crypto index fund.
• FDIG is not a crypto fund. The Fidelity Crypto Industry and Digital Payments ETF holds shares in companies: Coinbase, Block, Circle, mining firms, Robinhood. Its largest single position is a cash fund at 12.02%. Crypto held: none.
• The fund that matches Vanguard's own philosophy is EZPZ at 0.19%, or NCIQ at 0.25%. Both are cap-weighted, both track a published third-party index, both buyable in a Vanguard account.
• Check the fund's legal structure before using a retirement account. Some of these are grantor trusts outside the 1940 Act, others are registered funds, and the reporting differs.

Vanguard: what changed and what did not

Vanguard blocked spot bitcoin ETFs from its brokerage platform in January 2024, when those funds launched. Its stated reasoning was that the asset class did not fit a philosophy built on long-term investing in assets with underlying cash flows or economic value.

That position was consistent rather than arbitrary. Vanguard's entire product line rests on the argument that you capture the return of an asset class by owning all of it cheaply and holding it. Applying that to an asset with no earnings, no yield in the traditional sense, and no discounted-cash-flow value requires either a different justification or a different firm.

On 2 December 2025, Vanguard reversed the access decision without reversing the philosophical one. Brokerage clients can now trade third-party crypto ETFs and mutual funds that clear Vanguard's compliance screens, which covers bitcoin, ether, XRP and Solana products. Funds tied to meme coins remain restricted. Vanguard still does not offer direct crypto purchases, custody or staking.

Andrew Kadjeski, who runs brokerage and investments at Vanguard, told Bloomberg that crypto ETFs and mutual funds had been performing as designed while maintaining liquidity. That is a careful sentence about market structure, not an endorsement of the asset class, and it is the right way to read the change: Vanguard concluded the wrappers work, not that the thing inside them is now an investment it recommends.

The firm has separately said it has no plans to launch its own crypto ETFs or mutual funds. So the position as of October 2026 is simple to state: Vanguard will let you buy it and will not build it.

Worth noting the irony, because it is useful rather than just amusing. The crypto index ETFs now on the shelf are cap-weighted, rules-based, third-party-benchmarked and increasingly cheap, which describes Vanguard's product design precisely. Vanguard's objection has never been to indexing crypto. It is to crypto. If you share Vanguard's view of indexing and not its view of the asset class, the funds below are what that combination buys.

Fidelity: three products, one of which is not what it sounds like

Fidelity went the other way, early, and built a real lineup. It is still not an index lineup.

Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC), 0.25%. Spot bitcoin, single asset. Sits in the middle of a single-asset shelf that runs from about 0.14% to 0.25% among the major issuers.

Fidelity Ethereum Fund (FETH). Spot ether, single asset.

Fidelity Crypto, a direct trading platform for buying coins outright rather than through a fund.

And then the one that catches people:

Fidelity Crypto Industry and Digital Payments ETF (FDIG). This is an index ETF. It tracks a published index. The name contains the word "Crypto". It holds no cryptocurrency.

What it holds is equity. Its disclosed top positions include Coinbase Global at around 5.4%, IREN, Block, Circle Internet Group, BitMine Immersion Technologies, MARA Holdings, Applied Digital, Hut 8 and Robinhood Markets. The single largest line in the fund is Fidelity Securities Lending Cash Central Fund at 12.02%, which is a cash vehicle. The top ten positions come to roughly 34.1% of assets.

That is a thematic equity fund, and it is a perfectly reasonable one if equity in crypto-adjacent businesses is what you want. It is not index exposure to crypto, and the difference is not cosmetic:

• These companies have earnings, balance sheets and equity risk. A miner can go bankrupt in a bull market. An exchange can lose share. A token cannot do either of those things.
• Correlation is high but not one, and it breaks under stress, usually at the worst moment, because leveraged operating businesses do not behave like the assets they are levered to.
• 12% of the fund is cash. That is a sensible operational choice for a securities-lending programme and it is still not crypto exposure.

If you bought FDIG expecting a crypto index fund, you bought a different asset class. Check the holdings file. This applies to every fund in this category, from any issuer, where the name describes a theme and the holdings describe a stock portfolio.

What you can actually buy, on either platform

There are seven listed crypto index ETFs in the US as of October 2026, and both Vanguard and Fidelity brokerage accounts can reach the mainstream ones. Four are broad market:

Issuer figures, October 2026 except GDLC, whose own fund page was still carrying a 31 October 2025 as-of date when we checked.

Note the two columns on the right. Four funds, four index providers, constituent counts from five to ten, and bitcoin weights inside a 0.8 percentage point band. The fee column spans a factor of four. You are choosing between near-identical exposures at very different prices, which makes this one of the easier decisions in investing once you see the table.

And it gets starker when you isolate what the fee is buying. Three quarters of each fund is bitcoin, which you can buy separately at around 0.20%. Strip that out and the effective annual fee on the non-bitcoin quarter runs from about 0.16% on EZPZ to about 2.44% on BITW. A 15x spread. We show the full arithmetic in our breakdown of the crypto index ETF shelf and the method itself in our analysis of index funds against holding bitcoin directly.

For anyone who came here looking for the Vanguard approach applied to crypto, the answer is the cheap end of that table, bought and held, with no view on which asset wins. That is what the philosophy produces when you apply it honestly.

Three things to check that are specific to these platforms

1. Legal structure, especially in a retirement account.

Not all of these funds are the same kind of thing. Some are grantor trusts: BITW, for instance, is not registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940, not regulated under the Commodity Exchange Act, and is classified as nondiversified. The 21Shares index ETFs, by contrast, are registered under the 1940 Act. That difference affects tax reporting, the protections that apply, and what your custodian will accept. Confirm before you buy in an IRA, and check the tax documents you will receive rather than assuming they match your other ETFs.

2. The premium or discount, not just the fee.

Crypto index funds trade away from the value of their holdings far more than equity index funds do. BITW traded below its net asset value on 139 of 191 trading days in 2026 to date, at a premium on 46 and at NAV on 6. If you buy and sell on market, the change in that spread between your two trades is part of your return, and it is often larger than the fee. Look at the premium and discount history on the issuer's site before placing an order, and use limit orders.

3. Fund size against your order size.

Three of the seven funds hold 99% of the money in the category. Two of the newest launches are under $1.5m. A 0.19% fee on a fund with a wide spread and no depth is more expensive than a 0.25% fee on a fund with half a billion dollars in it. Pull up the actual bid and ask for the size you intend to trade, not the quoted spread.

The question underneath the search

Most people searching for a Vanguard crypto index fund are not really asking which ticker. They are asking whether there is a boring, cheap, diversified, buy-and-forget way to own this market, the way there is for global equities.

The honest answer in October 2026 is: nearly. The wrappers now exist, they are regulated, they are on the major brokerage platforms, and the cheapest of them cost less than many equity sector funds. What does not exist is the diversification. Every broad fund is roughly three-quarters bitcoin, because market-cap weighting in a market this concentrated has only one output. Buying a crypto index fund is mostly buying bitcoin with a small satellite attached, and the main variable under your control is how much you pay for that satellite.

If that is not the exposure you wanted, the weighting rule is the thing to change, not the provider. Sector weighting, capping and equal weighting all produce genuinely different baskets from the same assets, and we work through the arithmetic in our guide to sector-weighted construction. You can build and backtest any of those rules in Cryptoindex Pro, and our own published index methodology is on the methodology page. The standing caveat on any backtest: no trading costs, every fill at the printed price, and assembled by someone who already knows how the story ended.

FAQ

Does Vanguard offer a crypto index fund? No. Vanguard offers no crypto ETF, mutual fund, custody or staking product, and has said it has no plans to launch any. Since 2 December 2025 it does allow clients to trade approved third-party crypto ETFs and mutual funds in a Vanguard brokerage account.

Can I buy a Bitcoin ETF at Vanguard? Yes, as of 2 December 2025. Vanguard reversed its January 2024 ban and now permits third-party crypto ETFs and mutual funds that meet its compliance screens, including bitcoin, ether, XRP and Solana products. Meme-coin funds remain restricted.

Does Fidelity have a crypto index fund? Not a multi-asset one. Fidelity offers FBTC for spot bitcoin and FETH for spot ether, both single-asset, plus a direct trading platform. FDIG, despite its name, is an equity ETF that holds shares in crypto-related companies and no cryptocurrency.

Is FDIG a crypto ETF? No. It is an equity index ETF holding shares in exchanges, miners and payment companies, with its largest single position being a cash fund at around 12%. It gives you exposure to businesses in the crypto industry, not to crypto assets, and the two behave differently under stress.

What is the cheapest crypto index fund I can buy in a brokerage account? Franklin's EZPZ at 0.19%, then Hashdex's NCIQ at 0.25%. Both are cap-weighted and track published third-party indices. Confirm current fees and check liquidity at your intended order size, since the cheapest fund is not always the cheapest trade.

Why does Vanguard not launch its own crypto index fund? Its stated objection is to the asset class rather than to indexing it. Vanguard's framework values assets on underlying cash flows and economic value, which crypto does not provide in that form. The December 2025 change was about client access to third-party products, not a change of view on the asset.