<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none;" alt="" src="https://px.ads.linkedin.com/collect/?pid=4496002&amp;fmt=gif">

Schrödinger's Income Stream: GraniteShares Bets on Quantum Uncertainty

Wall Street has achieved what physicists thought impossible: monetising something that exists in a superposition between “revolutionary breakthrough” and “complete vaporware.”

GraniteShares just launched YieldBoost ETFs for quantum computing darlings D-Wave (QBTS) and Rigetti (RGTI), with the delightfully unsubtle tickers QBY and RGYY. Their strategy? Sell put options on 2x leveraged ETFs of these quantum stocks to generate weekly income distributions.


Let me translate: We're selling insurance on turbocharged versions of companies that might commercialise technology that could work at scale by maybe 2030.

The numbers are perfectly quantum:
•    QBTS: $8 billion market cap, $9 million in revenue, -$144 million in losses
•    RGTI: Similar trajectory, burning $200M+ annually
•    Both stocks: Up 800%+ in the past year
•    Distribution rates: Showing 95%+ return of capital (you're getting your own money back, but weekly!)

This is financial engineering at its most audacious. It's derivatives on derivatives on speculation on physics. You're not investing in quantum computers – you're selling volatility insurance on leveraged bets about companies trying to build them.

The truly beautiful part? Quantum computing's core appeal is solving problems regular computers can't. These ETFs have somehow created the inverse: a financial product so convoluted that understanding it requires more computational power than we currently possess.

Props to GraniteShares for recognising that in 2025, if retail investors are buying 2x leveraged quantum stock ETFs with enough volume to generate juicy option premiums, someone should be there to sell them the "income" wrapper.

The $635 million in AUM across their YieldBoost family suggests there's genuine demand for “turn my speculative tech stocks into weekly paychecks” products. They've also launched versions for semiconductors (SEMY), gold miners (NUGY), IonQ (IOYY), and Marathon Digital bitcoin mining (MAAY).

Is this a sustainable income strategy? Who knows – the quantum uncertainty principle applies here too. The answer exists in superposition until you measure your account balance.

At least with quantum computing, when you open the box, there's a 50% chance the cat is alive. With these distributions, there's a 95% chance you're just getting your own cat back, one paw at a time.

Bernie Thurston

Bernie loves data. Fortunately for him, London’s finance industry has been indulgent, providing him lots of benchmark data to play with and enjoy. Bernie’s journey began at Sky, where he designed the first interactive television and helped build a technical-based charity (ctt.org). He then hopped over to finance, and soon found himself at a start-up working on dividends and derivatives. Then, by nature of the fact that finance and technology have rapidly conjoined, he found himself working with Credit Suisse to build an index aggregation and distribution platform. Markit then acquired the start-up and Bernie battled his way up the greasy pole becoming the Managing Director of Markit’s equities division, with responsibility for index, ETF and Dividends. But the siren song of startups called once more. And Bernie was headhunted to rescue a failing index business. Over five years, he helped reverse the fortunes of DeltaOne Solutions, turning into a fighting force. So successful was the turn around that Markit came along and acquired this company as well. But Bernie still loved start-ups. To that end, he founded Ultumus, an ETF and benchmark data company. Ultumus aims to provide the best data in the most timely and consumable manner possible. With clients on both buy and sell side, when something happens in the index or ETF industry, Ultumus is the first to know.

Comments

Related posts

Search ETF Tickers 2025: A Year in Review