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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 Thurston is the founder and CEO of Ultumus, a leading provider of ETF and index data, calculation, and workflow solutions. With over 20 years of experience in financial technology, Bernie has been at the forefront of index and ETF innovation since 2003. His finance career began at Markit, where as Managing Director for Equities he designed and developed products for index and ETF composition and dividend forecasting from 2003 to 2011. He then founded and led DeltaOne Solutions as Managing Director, building it into a global provider of index and ETF trading data and technology services. The company managed over 100,000 multi-asset class products before being acquired by Markit in 2015. Following the acquisition, while working for an ETF issuer, Bernie identified fundamental issues in how index and ETF data was represented across the industry. This led him to found Ultumus in 2016, building solutions for ETF primary market operations. Under his leadership, Ultumus has grown into a market leader serving major financial institutions globally, with its ETF Order Management System (OMS) supporting create and redeem workflows worldwide and its PCF platform calculating and distributing portfolio composition files for ETF issuers across every major market. Bernie sold Ultumus to SIX Group in 2021, where it continues to expand across Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific. Known for building lasting teams and leveraging cutting-edge technology, Bernie is focused on establishing Ultumus as the backbone of the global index and ETF industry through standardisation and automation.

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