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Dividend Vision

Income Safety Research

Is BTCI's Distribution Safe?

BTCI currently carries a Distribution Safety Score™ of 16 (High risk), and the score has been improving over the past six months. The main thing weighing on the score is falling payout — distribution -44.0% over the past year. This is a model rating of observed payout data, not proof of distribution coverage or principal safety. Input completeness is high; missing inputs can limit the assessment.

Frequently asked questions

Is BTCI safe?

BTCI has a Distribution Safety Score of 16/100 (High risk), with high input completeness. This model rating is not proof of distribution coverage or principal safety. Review the payout record, total returns, holdings, and missing data; future distributions and prices can fall.

Is BTCI's distribution sustainable?

Model score: BTCI scores 16/100 (High risk) on the Distribution Safety Score, and the score has been improving over the past six months. Cash paid, trailing 12 months: $11.48 per share; there is not yet a full prior twelve months to compare against. Return of capital: No ingested distribution-character estimate; ROC is unknown rather than assumed to be zero. Total return vs cash paid: Since 2024-10-17, total return with distributions reinvested is +15.6% (7.8% annualized), against $26.86 per share paid out. A positive total return means the payout has not, so far, consumed the shares' value on net. Whether that is sustainable depends on the underlying's path and the manager's options overlay, which no score can forecast — treat this as evidence, not a verdict.

What does a BTCI Distribution Safety Score™ mean?

The score summarizes observed payout history, price behavior, structure, and track record under Dividend Vision's rules. It is not a prediction or a guarantee against a future cut, and missing inputs can limit the assessment.

IssuerNEOS
Distribution rate26.27%As-of date unavailable
FrequencyMonthly
Expense ratio0.98%As-of date unavailable
AUM$1,328,970,821As-of date unavailable
Inception10/16/2024

Distribution Safety Score™

16 High risk

The score has risen 4 points over roughly the past six months. Input completeness: high, over a payout record long enough to score against.

NEOS Bitcoin High Income ETF — see the full record on the BTCI ticker page.

Score computed September 20, 2026

Score history

2550752026-09-092026-09-20

Weekly readings; dashed portions are reconstructed backfill from historical data, solid portions were recorded on the day. Gaps mean the fund was not yet scorable.

What supports the score

  • an unbroken payment streak of 23 months
  • no consecutive distribution cuts in the recent record
  • complete inputs — every field the score reads is present

What weighs on the score

  • Falling payout (−30.8 points): Distribution -44.0% over the past year
  • Price erosion (−23.2 points): Share price -32% over 12 months
  • Crypto-linked volatility (−12 points): Tied to bitcoin/crypto — an extremely volatile asset
  • Volatile price (−11.1 points): Fell 48% peak-to-trough within 12 months
  • Short track record (−3 points): Only 1.9 years of distribution history
  • Cost / size (−1 points): Higher cost or smaller fund
  • High volatility (−0.6 points): Beta 1.48 — swings more than the market

Is BTCI's distribution sustainable?

"Is BTCI's distribution sustainable?" is the question behind most searches that land here. There is no honest yes/no: an option-income fund's payout is set by the manager each period and funded by premium, gains, or principal in a mix that changes with the underlying. What the data can say is whether the current payout is being earned or eroded:

The sections below show each of those inputs in full — the score's factor breakdown, the payment record, price and NAV trend, return of capital, and drawdowns — so you can weigh them yourself. A high yield that is being paid out of principal is not a cut yet, but it is the pattern that precedes one; see NAV erosion and spotting yield traps.

Distribution history

BTCI has paid 24 distributions since 2024-10-23, totaling $26.86 per share. BTCI does not have a complete prior twelve months of distributions to compare against, so a year-over-year run-rate comparison is not possible. The most recent payment was not part of a consecutive-cut pattern.

Distribution history through September 16, 2026.

Payments by year

YearPaymentsTotal / share
20243$3.99
202512$16.05
2026 (year to date)9$6.82

Last 12 payments

DateAmount
2026-09-16$0.72
2026-08-19$0.63
2026-07-22$0.65
2026-06-16$0.65
2026-05-20$0.79
2026-04-22$0.80
2026-03-18$0.78
2026-02-18$0.76
2026-01-21$1.04
2025-12-24$1.00
2025-11-26$1.02
2025-10-22$1.30
$3.992024$16.052025$6.822026*

* 2026 is year-to-date, not a full year.

Price trend and NAV context

Excluding distributions, the share price is -49.2% over one year. A recent NAV is not on file, and the 52-week trading range is $24.80–$48.96. Falling prices alongside distributions warrant review, but price alone cannot establish payout coverage, tax character, or investment performance. Compare total returns and the fund's reports as well as the pattern covered in NAV erosion.

Dividend Vision does not currently publish a full NAV time series on this page. The price-only readings exclude distributions and are not a NAV total-return series.

Price-return data through September 18, 2026; NAV uses its own date above.

Total return vs distributions

Since inception (2024-10-17), BTCI's total return with distributions reinvested is +15.6% (7.8% annualized). Over the same period it has paid out $26.86 per share in cash distributions — a high headline yield is not the same thing as a high total return, because price change eats into (or adds to) what you keep.

BenchmarkTotal return over the same windowBTCI vs it
QQQ+48.2%-32.6 pp
SPY+33.8%-18.2 pp

Total-return data through September 18, 2026.

Return of capital

Return of capital (ROC) is a tax classification that generally reduces the shareholder's cost basis. It does not by itself establish an economic loss or identify the cash source. Dividend Vision has no ingested distribution-character estimate for BTCI, so ROC is unknown rather than assumed to be zero and this page does not guess at one. The fund's annual tax documents are the definitive source. How ROC works — and when it is and isn't a warning sign — is covered in return of capital analysis.

Drawdown and risk

Over the past year BTCI's deepest peak-to-trough decline (max drawdown) was -48.4%. Its beta versus the broad market is 1.48 — see what beta measures.

Volatility, Sharpe, and Sortino require full price-bar history that this page's offline data set does not include, so they are omitted here rather than estimated. The comparison pages compute them from bar data when available.

Price-risk data through September 18, 2026.

Higher-scoring alternatives

TickerFundScore
YBTCRoundhill Bitcoin Covered Call Strategy ETF48Compare
YBITYieldMax Bitcoin Option Income Strategy ETF33Compare
MSTYYieldMax MSTR Option Income Strategy ETF29Compare
CONYYieldMax COIN Option Income Strategy ETF29Compare

Selection criteria: candidates come from the same hand-curated, same-strategy peer set used by Best BTCI Alternatives, filtered to funds whose current Distribution Safety Score is strictly higher than BTCI's, ranked by score. Never ranked by yield alone.

Methodology, sources, and limits

The Distribution Safety Score is a rules-based 0–100 rating computed by Dividend Vision from a fund's payout history, price behavior, structure, and track record; the full factor list and scoring rules are documented in the methodology article. It describes the current state of observable data. It is not a prediction or a guarantee of future distributions, and nothing on this page is investment advice.

This page is generated from Dividend Vision's data pipeline and reviewed editorially. Page freshness summary: the newest source date on this page is September 20, 2026. Each figure keeps the field-level date above; this summary does not imply that older fields share it.

How does BTCI behave inside your portfolio?

A fund's safety profile changes in context — overlap, concentration, and income mix shift when it sits next to your other holdings. Upload your portfolio to see its combined Distribution Safety Score and projected income.

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Learn the method

The metrics and risks behind this list, explained in the Academy.

From the blog