Please note that VanEck may have a position(s) in the digital asset(s) and companies described below.

Key Takeaways

• A second positive month: NODE returned +2.3% in September as the miners recovered from their summer selloff, versus -2.7% for crypto equities (the MVIS Global Digital Assets Equity Index, or MVDAPP), and +1.9% for the Nasdaq Composite, while bitcoin rose +5.9%. Year to date, NODE is up 12.8%.
• Coin exchange-traded products (ETPs) and miners carried the month: top contributors were the bitcoin ETP (+95.7 bps), Zcash ETP (+81.2 bps), and Hut 8 (+67.9 bps); rate- and policy-sensitive fintech detracted, led by Figure (-124.5 bps) and Circle (-39.2 bps).
• Crypto exposure through the coins: coin ETPs reached 22.1% of assets, lifting NODE's correlation to bitcoin to 0.70 from 0.42 in August. 1-month standard deviation was 62.6%, versus 70.6% for crypto equities.

NODE does not hold bitcoin or other digital assets directly. It invests in equities and digital asset ETPs, and carries a materially different risk profile; a single crypto asset is not directly comparable to the Fund.

Click here for NODE Standardized Performance

Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Investment return and principal value will fluctuate; shares may be worth more or less than original cost when redeemed. Current performance may be lower or higher. Call 800.826.2333 or visit vaneck.com for month-end performance.

This commentary reflects the views of the portfolio management team as of September 30, 2026, and should not be construed as investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Past performance does not guarantee future results; the Fund's YTD return was 12.78% (NAV), through September 30, 2026, and investors should consider this alongside any monthly figures presented herein.

Monthly Review

NODE returned +2.3% in September, ahead of crypto equities, the Nasdaq Composite, and the S&P 500. Bitcoin led at +5.9%, and coin ETPs captured a large share of that move. Year to date, NODE is up 12.8%, against +15.2% for crypto equities, +16.1% for the Nasdaq Composite, +12.8% for the S&P 500, and -4.1% for bitcoin. We now show the Nasdaq Composite in place of the Nasdaq 100 because it is the broader measure of the Nasdaq market.

The leaders were miners with signed AI tenants and energized power, along with crypto ETPs. The drag came from names exposed to rates and Washington: September delivered both a Fed rate increase and a failed Senate vote on market-structure legislation. Within days of that vote, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) began delivering parts of what the legislation would have through exemptive relief and staff guidance. That rapid deregulation catalyzed a sharp rally in many altcoins; the MarketVector Digital Assets 100 Small-Cap Index (MVDASC) rose 55% in September, according to Bloomberg. The risk is that a different administration could seek to reverse some of these rules.

Bitcoin's path through the month:

• Early rally: on September 3, NODE's best day (+7.4%), TeraWulf rose 9.5% in a broad rebound across AI-infrastructure names while bitcoin cracked $80,000 for the first time in months.
• Mid-month dip: after the Senate vote, the Fed raised rates a quarter point on September 16, and bitcoin initially fell to about $75,600.
• Breakout: spot bitcoin ETPs swung from mid-month redemptions to more than $2B in creations, and bitcoin crossed above its 365-day moving average near $80,500. By September 21 it was above $86,000, its highest level since late January.

September 2026 Returns (8/31/2026 to 9/30/2026)

Source: Morningstar as of 9/30/2026. Standard deviation is annualized. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Index performance is not representative of fund performance. It is not possible to invest directly in an index. Not intended as a recommendation to buy or sell any securities named herein. Fund performance current to the most recent month end is available by visiting vaneck.com or by calling 800.826.2333.

How We Have Positioned the Fund Since the Summer

The portfolio has been shaped by 3 broad decisions over the past several months.

1. We concentrated in the miners during the July selloff.

When the bitcoin mining stocks converting to AI data centers fell sharply after the Situational Awareness unwind (a large, levered AI-focused fund that sold its public equity book in late July after margin calls), we cut peripheral positions and concentrated in our highest-conviction compute names, companies that have signed decade-plus leases with AI labs and hyperscalers. Permitting headlines in Texas and Pennsylvania delayed the payoff through August, and September's rebound began to deliver it.

The group increasingly trades on AI leases and funding costs rather than on the bitcoin price. The average correlation of our 12 miner holdings to bitcoin's daily returns is 0.46 year to date, down from 0.50 when we last measured in July and at the low end of the group's history. MARA, Riot, and CleanSpark remain the most bitcoin-sensitive; Bitdeer is the only name whose correlation has risen since July. As we have detailed, there is a price at which these companies could pivot back toward bitcoin mining, but it remains well above current spot, probably closer to $250,000.

2. We added bitcoin ETP exposure as our capitulation signals clustered.

Our Mid-August Bitcoin ChainCheck found 8 of our 12 capitulation signals firing, with long-term holders shedding 356,000 bitcoin (BTC) over 30 days, and all 12 had reached their capitulation zones at some point in the prior 3 months. We concluded that bitcoin appeared to have capitulated and was nearing or already in an accumulation phase, with bitcoin at $63,549 on August 11.

We acted on that work. The bitcoin ETP allocation rose from roughly 7% of the Fund at the end of June to 16.8% at the end of September, and bitcoin has since rallied to about $83,600. Including ether, Solana, Zcash, and Hyperliquid, coin ETPs are now 22.1% of assets, approaching the Fund's limit on investment in its subsidiary, which generally may not exceed 25% of total assets at each quarter end.

Coin ETPs are now 22.1% of assets, approaching the Fund's 25% subsidiary limit.

3. We built crypto exposure through the coins rather than through leveraged treasury companies.

When we want more exposure to bitcoin or other networks, our default is a spot ETP that tracks the coin. The main alternative inside an equity fund is a digital asset treasury company (DAT): a listed company whose strategy is to hold crypto on its balance sheet, typically funded with debt, preferred stock, or serial equity issuance. That structure layers risks on top of the coin:

• Leverage magnifies drawdowns, and preferred dividends must be serviced through the cycle.
• Dilution from repeated equity raises and outsized executive awards.

As we laid out in our Mid-September ChainCheck, we remain underweight DATs for those reasons.

That said, there are times when DATs make sense for a fund like ours, including for tax and structural reasons. Equity in a DAT is ordinary stock for a registered fund, while coin ETPs are held through a subsidiary that is subject to a limit measured at each quarter end. As the ETP sleeve approaches that limit, DATs could become an attractive way to manage bitcoin and crypto beta.

Washington: A Failed Vote, Then Deregulation

On September 15, the Senate failed a procedural cloture vote on the CLARITY Act, 49-50, well short of the 60 votes required. It was NODE's worst day of the month (-4.2%). Within days, the regulators moved on their own. SEC Chair Paul Atkins said on X that the agency would deliver certainty with or without legislation, and CFTC Chair Michael Selig said in his own X post that his agency was ready to ship its rules.

The SEC’s “Innovation Exemption” (September 17).

The SEC granted a 5-year exemption allowing Tokenized Securities Venues to trade tokenized stocks, or tokenized versions of national market system (NMS)-listed equities, through permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools without registering as traditional exchanges. The same order spared liquidity providers who supply tokenized NMS stock with their own capital from registering as dealers. In practical terms, onchain trading infrastructure can now perform exchange- and dealer-like functions for listed equities without the full registration burden. The relief runs through September 17, 2031.

The CFTC's no-action position (the same day).

The CFTC said qualifying providers of passive software may connect users to CFTC-registered derivatives firms and exchanges without registering as introducing brokers or associated persons.

The SEC's token buyback FAQ (late September).

The SEC's Division of Corporation Finance addressed protocol buybacks. Where a crypto system is functional and the token is not itself a security, announcing a repurchase for purposes such as treasury management, supply reduction, or protocol burns does not amount to the kind of pledge of essential managerial effort that can convert a token into a security. A later update narrowed this to protocols where no central party exists, favoring fully onchain treasury mechanics.

This matters because buybacks have become one of the strongest fundamentals in crypto. Projects spent a record $638M on token buybacks year to date through late August, according to Allium Labs, with Hyperliquid and Pump.fun accounting for nearly 90% of that. The FAQ is staff guidance rather than Commission rulemaking, but it removes a long-standing overhang for open-source protocols that return revenue to tokenholders.

Taken together, these steps give onchain venues relief from exchange and broker registration and give protocols room to run buybacks. The market's response was immediate in smaller tokens, with small-cap crypto up 55% for the month. Because much of this rests on exemptive orders and staff guidance, a future administration could seek to reverse parts of it.

Biggest Winners and Losers

Performance split between AI compute and crypto ETPs on one side and rate- and regulation-sensitive financials on the other.

Source: VanEck as of 9/30/2026. Contributions are calculated from daily holding weights and summed; totals do not add to the Fund's monthly return because of the compounding of daily returns, an effect that was larger than usual given September's wide daily price swings. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Not intended as a recommendation to buy or sell any securities named herein.

Bitcoin's path through the month:

• Early rally: on September 3, NODE’s best day (+7.4%), TeraWulf rose 9.5% in a broad rebound across AI-infrastructure names while bitcoin cracked $80,000 for the first time in months.
• Mid-month dip: after the Senate vote, the Fed raised rates a quarter point on September 16, and bitcoin initially fell to about $75,600.

Breakout: spot bitcoin ETPs swung from mid-month redemptions to The miners rebounded even as the market continued to digest the funding needs of the AI buildout at higher interest rates. Hut 8 led as construction continued across its campuses, and it closed a $1.07B senior secured revolving credit facility that strengthens its liquidity. IREN built on fiscal-year results that included a new multi-year contract with a leading frontier AI lab and $4B of contracted annual recurring revenue (ARR) for 2026 capacity.

The coin ETPs were led by bitcoin and Zcash. The Zcash ETP began trading on August 25, and ZEC ran from the mid-$800s to the mid-$1,500s during September, with nearly $250M of net inflows into spot Zcash ETPs over the month according to SoSoValue.

The detractors. Figure fell 21% as several large distributions from venture investors, many sitting on large gains, added supply while rising Treasury yields weighed on rate-sensitive lenders. In our view, the stock is in a post-initial public offering (IPO) trough, and we believe selling exhaustion, combined with continued strong fundamentals, could eventually catalyze a rebound. We added to the position during the month.

Circle fell 14% around the CLARITY Act vote after trading at elevated levels into the event. On balance, we think the bill's failure probably helps crypto companies' ability to pass yield through to users compared with passage, since CLARITY had become a re-trade of the GENIUS Act's stablecoin terms. It does, however, introduce competition and extend regulatory uncertainty.

Source: VanEck as of 9/30/2026. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Not intended as a recommendation to buy or sell any securities named herein. Fund performance current to the most recent month end is available by visiting vaneck.com or by calling 800.826.2333.

Portfolio Changes

We reduced our position count from 44 to 40 and made 4 sets of moves:

• Raised coin exposure: we continued adding to the bitcoin ETP, with a smaller addition to ether. Coin ETPs rose to 22.1% of assets from 17.4%.
• Took profits in AI hardware: trimmed SK Hynix, exited Vertiv, and sold Reddit after strong runs.
• Rotated within power: exited NRG and Brookfield Renewable; added to Vistra, Talen, and Constellation.
• Rebalanced the miners: trimmed Hut 8, Cipher, and TeraWulf into early-month strength and added to CleanSpark, Bitdeer, Core Scientific, MARA, and Riot. Net miner exposure rose to 42.8% from 41.5%, mostly through price appreciation.

September 2026 Risk and Return Summary

NODE's 1-month standard deviation was 62.6%, versus 70.6% for crypto equities, 50.9% for bitcoin, and 17.5% for the Nasdaq Composite. Over 3 months, NODE ran at 68.5%, against 73.2% for crypto equities. The peak-to-trough drawdown was 11.1% (September 22 to September 30). 10 of 21 trading days were positive, with a best day of +7.4% and a worst day of -4.2%.

NODE's correlation to bitcoin rose to 0.70 from 0.42 in August, with a beta of 0.86. The driver was the larger coin ETP allocation; the miners themselves remain loosely tied to bitcoin, at a 0.46 average correlation year to date. NODE's correlation with crypto equities was 0.94.

Correlation Matrix (daily returns, September 2026)

Source: VanEck, Bloomberg as of 9/30/2026. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Index performance is not representative of fund performance. It is not possible to invest directly in an index. Not intended as a recommendation to buy or sell any securities named herein. Fund performance current to the most recent month end is available by visiting vaneck.com or by calling 800.826.2333.

Forward Outlook

We enter Q4 with our largest bitcoin ETP allocation since launch, consistent with the accumulation-phase view in our Mid-August ChainCheck. If the debasement trade resumes, we believe bitcoin stands to benefit disproportionately. Bitcoin remains highly volatile and could decline significantly. In our view the 4-year cycle remains supportive, though past cycles may not repeat.

Our approach is unchanged: broad exposure to companies making or saving money from the adoption of digital assets, while seeking to manage volatility relative to crypto equities. Near-term catalysts we are watching include the pace at which the SEC and CFTC extend September's relief into formal rules, the Fed's path after the September hike and what it means for AI infrastructure financing, and state-level data center permitting in Texas and Pennsylvania. See our latest Bitcoin ChainCheck for our cycle view.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a digital asset treasury company, and how does it differ from a spot crypto ETP?

A digital asset treasury company (DAT) is a listed company whose primary strategy is to hold crypto on its balance sheet, typically funded with debt, preferred stock, or serial equity issuance. A spot ETP simply tracks the coin. The DAT structure layers leverage and dilution on top of the coin’s own volatility, so DAT equity can move more than the underlying asset in both directions, and preferred dividends must be serviced through the cycle.

What did regulators do after the CLARITY Act vote failed?

On September 17, the SEC exempted onchain venues that use automated market makers to trade tokenized listed stocks from registering as exchanges, and exempted their liquidity providers from dealer registration. The CFTC relieved passive software providers from introducing-broker registration. Later in the month, SEC staff guidance said functional, decentralized protocols can announce token buybacks without that alone turning the token into a security. The deregulatory push coincided with a 55% September gain in small-cap crypto.

Why did Figure and Circle fall while bitcoin rose?

Figure faced heavy selling from venture investors distributing large gains, along with rising yields; in our view, the stock is in a post-IPO trough, and selling exhaustion could eventually support a rebound. Circle traded at elevated levels into the CLARITY vote. We think the failure likely helps stablecoin issuers pass yield to users relative to passage, but it adds competition and uncertainty.

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