Virtune Staked NEAR ETP lists on Xetra: the 1.49 percent fee takes more than half the staking yield

A second staking product on NEAR Protocol has been trading in Germany since Wednesday, October 28, 2026. The Swedish issuer Virtune AB has listed its Staked NEAR ETP on Deutsche Börse Xetra and announced the step on October 29. You buy it through your ordinary securities account in euros, under the ISIN SE0025837735 and the ticker VRTR. The number that matters most sits in the small print: a 1.49 percent annual management fee against a staking yield the issuer puts at 2.6 to 2.7 percent.

That leaves a little over one percentage point for you. This is not an argument against the product, but it is the calculation that belongs before the purchase. Fees on the large Bitcoin products have been falling for years; on a staked altcoin ETP they are considerably higher, and the advertised yield shrinks accordingly.

Virtune has listed the Staked NEAR ETP on Deutsche Börse Xetra since October 28

Virtune AB, based in Stockholm, is an issuer of exchange traded products specialising in crypto assets. By its own account the firm runs 24 ETPs with around 340 million dollars under management. The Staked NEAR ETP is its 13th product on the German market.

An ETP, short for exchange traded product, is a listed security that tracks the price of an underlying asset and trades on an exchange like a share. The product itself is not new. It has traded on Nasdaq Stockholm since August 20, 2025, though in Swedish kronor there. The Xetra listing makes it accessible to German investors without a currency detour for the first time.

Virtune chief executive Christopher Kock explains the move in the October 29 announcement as an expansion of the firm's German business. He is quoted there saying the company is pleased to broaden its presence in Germany with the listing of its 13th product on the German market. Virtune makes no statement about expected demand.

For the German market this is the second attempt with this underlying. cryptoticker.io reported on September 25, 2026 that a staking product on NEAR had passed 100 million dollars under management, driven by the price rather than by fresh inflows. Anyone comparing today therefore has two routes to choose from. For an overview of the product categories that trade in Germany, see our guide to crypto ETFs and ETPs in Germany.

ISIN SE0025837735 and ticker VRTR: the ETP trades in euros instead of Swedish kronor

You need three identifiers to find the paper in your account. The ISIN is SE0025837735, the German securities number is A4APTM, and on Xetra the ETP trades under the ticker VRTR. The SE prefix in the ISIN points to Sweden as the country of issue, not to the trading currency. Settlement on Xetra is in euros.

That saves you the foreign exchange charge a purchase in Stockholm would incur. It does not remove currency risk. The underlying NEAR is quoted in dollars, and the dollar rate feeds through to the value of the ETP even when you pay in euros. The product carries no currency hedge.

A 1.49 percent management fee stands against a 2.6 to 2.7 percent staking yield

The annual management fee is 1.49 percent. On the staking yield, the issuer's documents give two slightly different figures. The October 29 announcement speaks of around 2.7 percent a year as of October 27, 2026, while the provider's product page says 2.6 percent. Both are snapshots. Staking rewards depend on how many tokens are staked across the network and how many transactions it processes. The yield is not guaranteed, and it can fall.

Set the two against each other and the picture is clear. At a gross yield of 2.6 percent the fee swallows 57 percent of the income, at 2.7 percent it still takes 55 percent. Between 1.11 and 1.21 percentage points remain before any tax is deducted. Should the network yield drop below 1.49 percent, the fee eats into the holding.

That is the logic of every staked ETP and no peculiarity of this issuer. It carries weight nonetheless, because the fee range across crypto ETPs is wide. If you are looking for a product on the same underlying, hold the fees of competing papers against each other rather than looking at the advertised yield alone. How much staking pays in the first place is clear from the yields of the common staking providers.

Accumulating instead of distributing: the coin entitlement per ETP grows daily

Nothing from the staking reaches your account. Virtune credits the income to the product, which lifts the coin entitlement per unit; the issuer reflects this daily in the net asset value. As of October 28, 2026, one unit carries 1.02237333 NEAR. That figure grows with every day the network generates rewards.

Accumulating means income stays inside the product and raises the value of the unit instead of being paid out to holders. You see the staking reward in the price, then, not in a credit entry. How this difference between distributing and accumulating feeds through to the timing of income and to tax on staking ETPs was set out at length by cryptoticker.io on August 16, 2026.

In practice this has two consequences. You have no cash flow with which to buy something else. And you have no annual statement of staking income received, of the kind an exchange issues for direct staking. If you have to document your income, you will be working with price differences here.

Physically backed: the NEAR sit in cold storage at Coinbase, according to the issuer

According to Virtune, the ETP is 100 percent physically backed with NEAR. The tokens are held at Coinbase, in cold storage, meaning on keys without a permanent connection to the internet. The issuer draws an explicit distinction from synthetic certificates, where no crypto asset is deposited and only a swap agreement with a counterparty stands behind the paper.

Physical backing means this for you: behind every unit sits an actually held balance that serves as collateral. It does not mean you can get at that balance. A retail investor cannot withdraw the deposited tokens to a wallet of their own; that right is routinely reserved for authorised market participants. If you really want to hold the tokens yourself, you buy them on an exchange and move them to your own hardware wallet.

A bearer note: issuer risk remains despite the physical backing

In legal terms a crypto ETP is not a fund unit but a collateralised security issued by the provider. A fund is segregated assets and protected if the fund company becomes insolvent; an ETP is not. If the issuer runs into trouble, the collateral decides what you get back, not a statutory protection mechanism.

Deposit insurance does not apply here either. The statutory protection of 100,000 euros per customer and bank covers balances in accounts, not securities. That is no shortcoming of this product but the norm for every listed crypto product in Europe. You should still know it before you put a larger sum behind a single issuer.

In its documents Virtune refers to a base prospectus approved in the EU, together with final terms and a product summary. These documents set out the specific conditions, including the cases in which the issuer may redeem the product early. Reading them costs ten minutes and answers exactly the questions a product page leaves open.

MiCA does not apply to the ETP; prospectus law governs the security

The European crypto regulation MiCA governs crypto assets and the providers that trade or hold them. An ETP falls outside it because it is a transferable security. Prospectus law and securities supervision apply instead, the same framework as for a bond or a certificate.

For you that is more advantage than drawback, because the distribution route is a familiar one. Your custodian executes the order, assesses appropriateness and issues the settlement. You should neither look for nor expect MiCA authorisation of the issuer for this product, though; for a security it would simply be the wrong certificate.

Tax in the securities account: the one-year holding period is disputed for ETPs

Here lies the biggest difference from holding the coin in your own wallet, and it is uncomfortably blurred. If you hold NEAR directly, the taxation of private disposals applies in Germany; after a holding period of one year the gain is tax free. With an ETP, the classification depends on what the paper legally promises you.

If it securitises a claim to delivery of the deposited tokens or to the proceeds of their sale, there is a claim in kind, and the one-year period can apply. If it securitises a monetary claim, it is a capital claim within the meaning of section 20 of the German Income Tax Act, and 25 percent withholding tax plus the solidarity surcharge falls due regardless of the holding period. In exchange, losses can be offset within the pot for investment income.

No supreme court ruling specifically on crypto ETPs exists so far, and custodian banks treat the products inconsistently: some withhold the tax even though the investor invokes the one-year period. Do not rely on a provider's marketing claim, then. Read the product terms on the delivery claim and settle the case with a tax adviser. What your bank actually withholds shows up in your tax certificate, and anything over-withheld you reclaim through your tax return.

NEAR at 4.44 dollars: down 10.8 percent in seven days

The listing falls into a weak phase for the underlying. NEAR costs around 4.44 dollars on October 29, 2026, putting it 3.6 percent below the previous day and 10.8 percent below the level of a week earlier (source: CoinGecko). A good 78 percent separates the price from its all-time high of January 16, 2022.

That is neither an argument to buy nor one to sell, but the frame the staking yield sits in. A net return of a little over one percentage point a year hardly registers against a weekly move in double digits. Buying for the yield means, in effect, buying the price.

Scalable Capital, Smartbroker, finanzen.net ZERO and comdirect carry the ETP

According to the issuer, the Staked NEAR ETP is tradable for German investors through Scalable Capital, Smartbroker, finanzen.net ZERO and comdirect. More houses may follow; tradability as such comes with the Xetra listing anyway, provided your broker connects to Xetra and does not rule out crypto ETPs on principle.

If in doubt, test the order screen with the ISIN. If your broker cannot find the paper, the reason is usually an internal exclusion list rather than the exchange. Which houses offer crypto ETPs broadly, and what an order costs there, differs considerably.

Spread and trading hours: the cost block no fee table shows

On a freshly listed paper with small volume, the spread has a noticeable say in your return. The spread is the gap between the bid and the ask, and therefore a cost no fee schedule discloses. Look at it in the order book before you buy.

Trade inside Xetra's main trading hours where possible, weekdays between 9 a.m. and 5.30 p.m., because the issuer quotes continuously during that window. Outside those hours the spreads widen. Set a limit rather than a market order: with a thin book, an unlimited order can fill at a price you did not want.

Staked NEAR ETP: the fee costs more than half the staking yield

The Xetra listing gives German investors convenient access to NEAR with staking included, without a wallet of their own and without delegating themselves. That convenience is paid for with 1.49 percent a year, and at the current network yield that is more than half the income. Three steps before you place an order:

1. Weigh the costs. Set the 1.49 percent against the current network yield and check whether a competing paper on the same underlying is cheaper. Which custodian carries the ETP, and what an order costs there, is shown by our broker comparison.
2. Clarify the tax position. Read the product terms to see whether the paper promises you delivery or money, and settle the consequence with your tax adviser. What your bank actually withholds is best documented as you go, for instance with a tax tool or portfolio tracker.
3. Decide on custody. If you really want to own the tokens and delegate them yourself, the ETP is the wrong instrument; the route then runs through an exchange and your own hardware wallet. If you would rather stay in your securities account, issuer risk is the price.

(As of October 29, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)