VanEck will rebrand its Gaming ETF (BJK) as the VanEck Degen Economy ETF after market close on April 8, 2026, shifting from traditional gaming equities to companies whose business models are rooted in digital-first, “degen”-aligned sectors. The fund will be actively managed, charge a 0.50% management fee, and require holdings to derive at least 50% of their revenue from these digital-first activities, consolidating the thesis around on-chain and internet-native ecosystems under a simplified fee structure.
Mandate, sectors and active management
The ETF will scope companies across four high-growth segments: Millennial Finance, covering digital brokerages, crypto exchanges, neobanks, consumer credit scoring, BNPL and payment services; the Gig Economy, spanning ride-hailing, delivery, freelance marketplaces and peer-to-peer platforms; Online Forums and community-driven platforms; and Digital Gambling, Betting and Gaming, including online casinos, iGaming software, lottery operators, video-game developers and sports-data analytics. To qualify for inclusion, companies must generate at least half of their revenue from these activities, aligning the portfolio with a clearly defined digital-first mandate.
This will be an actively managed vehicle rather than a passive index tracker, giving the manager discretion to add or remove holdings based on evolving ties to on-chain or digital-first ecosystems. VanEck intends to apply a unitary 0.50% management fee to enhance cost visibility for investors, while the fund structure remains that of an exchange-traded fund, a pooled vehicle that trades on exchanges like a stock and can be evaluated using metrics such as compound annual growth rate (CAGR).
The rebrand simplifies the external investor narrative but increases operational complexity for internal product and operations teams, particularly around the 50% revenue-threshold test. Fund operations will require standardized mapping from company segment disclosures into the ETF’s eligibility rules, increasing the number of steps per operation in onboarding, screening and periodic rebalancing, as active management raises monitoring cadence and transparency expectations for prime brokers and custodians.
Fee presentation is streamlined by the single 0.50% management charge, making prospectus comparisons more straightforward, but the fund’s concentration in volatile consumer-behavior and regulatory-sensitive sectors raises usability and communications risks for retail investors. Sudden policy shifts in areas such as gambling or crypto could necessitate rapid investor updates, refreshed risk disclosures and adjustments to execution-time expectations as market makers reprice spreads and liquidity.
Investor-facing interfaces will need to surface permission transparency, estimated transaction-cost displays and clear signals around portfolio turnover to contextualize potential short-term churn, while compliance and distribution teams prepare scenario-driven disclosure playbooks for regulatory events or swift sector deratings. The operational focus shifts toward continuous revenue classification, faster disclosure cycles and UI elements that help investors understand the implications of concentrated exposure to these high-beta segments.
VanEck positions this ETF within a broader build-out of crypto-related products, including registrations and approvals for Solana-linked and liquid-staking vehicles, and frames the Degen Economy theme around a projected 53.7% CAGR through 2030 for the aggregated sectors, while acknowledging boom-and-bust dynamics, elevated user churn and sensitivity to disposable income. Jeffrey Park of Morningstar Research Services notes that this is the first fund to explicitly carry “Degen” in its name, underscoring a cultural-to-institutional shift as digital-first behaviors move into mainstream wrappers despite their volatility and regulatory exposure.
VanEck’s rebrand condenses a culturally driven investment thesis into a single, actively managed ETF with defined eligibility rules and a 0.50% fee, moving operational priorities toward revenue-source verification and accelerated communication workflows. The Degen Economy ETF is designed to institutionalize exposure to on-chain and digital-first sectors while accepting the need for tighter risk, disclosure and product-governance disciplines.