Polkadot ETF realized $4.52 of loss per $1 in staking rewards

On Friday, the 21Shares Polkadot ETF (TDOT) reported that it realized $4.52 of loss per share by selling Polkadot (DOT) tokens to make each $1 per share of staking payouts last quarter.

The fund sold 98,505 DOT last quarter to generate $107,510 of cash payments to shareholders. Those sales finalized losses of $485,553 due to the dramatic decline of DOT.

Specifically, the price of DOT declined 34% during Q2 2026. For the 12 months ending June 30, 2026, DOT declined 76%.

TDOT shareholders do not actually receive staking rewards denominated in DOT. Instead, the fund must sell DOT to mimick and provide the corresponding staking rewards in USD for its shareholders.

All things considered, the payout is embarrassing. Holding TDOT from April through June this year entitled shareholders $0.146980 per share of payouts, which certainly did not compensate for the fund’s 34% share price decline from $14.95 to $9.86.

This is, of course, not any particular fault of 21Shares but rather the fault of DOT itself, which continues to fall out of favor with investors.

DOT was supposed to power parallelized execution capable of roughly 1 million transactions per second across up to 100 parachains, an ‘internet of blockchains’ with shared security, and seamless cross-chain interoperability.