Summary NEOS Bitcoin High Income ETF leverages a dynamic covered call strategy to convert Bitcoin volatility into high monthly income, now yielding around 27%. BTCI outperformed Bitcoin during the recent drawdown, delivering a smaller loss (-14.5% vs. -18.7%) and consistent distributions, validating its income-focused approach. Assets under management have more than doubled to $1.2B, reflecting strong investor conviction even through a 40% price decline. I rate BTCI a strong buy at current levels, citing historical recovery patterns, robust income, and a favorable entry point for long-term, income-oriented Bitcoin investors. Back in August 2025, I published an article introducing the NEOS Bitcoin High Income ETF ( BTCI ). I spoke about how its dynamic covered call strategy turns Bitcoin’s volatility into a steady monthly income stream. At that point, BTCI had already returned 58% since launching in October 2024, was yielding more than 25% annualized, and had gathered over $500 million in assets under management. I was bullish, so much so that I moved half of my Bitcoin allocation into BTCI and rated it a Buy. Since then, the crypto market has not done well. Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $126,210 on October 6, 2025, then sold off sharply, dropping to a local low near $60,000 in February 2026 before bouncing back. This week, it’s trading around $76,000, still about 38–40% below its peak. BTCI fell along with it. But the way it declined and what it kept paying throughout reinforces my conviction. I believe in BTCI and NEOS' strategy. Seeing the strategy being used in other funds, I believe this is a dip that is worth buying into. The upside potential is there for a patient long-term investor, and what it keeps paying throughout reinforces my conviction. I’m more bullish now than I was when I first covered it. How BTCI Has Performed Since My Last Article Bitcoin went on a massive run in October 2025, hit a peak, and has been trending lower ever since. BTCI benefited from that rally. The share price was in the low 60s, and the distributions were at roughly 1.4 dollars per share. When the crypto bear market started, BTCI suffered along with it. Currently trading in the mid-30s and with distributions ranging from 70 to 80 cents, BTCI has fallen a long way. BTCI will perform in line with bitcoin's price action, as BTCI is not designed to protect against bitcoin drawdowns. Seeking Alpha The more important question is how BTCI performed compared to holding bitcoin outright. Over the past year, we see that BTCI is down 14.49% in total return, while BTC is down 18.73%. The dynamic covered call strategy is doing its job during this downturn. Partially offsetting losses due to income coming in, steady cash flow makes a big difference when holding a stock during a downtrend. The pattern is exactly what you would expect and want from this structure: BTCI lags in explosive upside and outperforms during drawdowns. For income investors, that asymmetry is the entire point. Seeking Alpha Seeking Alpha Also important to NOTE the fund has continued to grow. At the time of my original article, BTCI had around $500 million in assets under management; it now sits at around $1.2 billion in total assets under management. The fund has gotten more popular, and investors have been buying the dip. This kind of conviction during a 40% drawdown tells you the market understands what this fund can do when the underlying starts to recover. QQQI Shows US the Blueprint for a Recovery - Proof of Concept One of the strongest arguments and reasons why I like BTCI right now actually has nothing to do with Bitcoin at all. It is about QQQI, NEOS's Nasdaq 100 covered call ETF that uses the same core strategy and is run by the same fund. QQQI has a longer track record and has already been through multiple market dips, giving us real-world data and a road map for how NEOS funds behave when the market pulls back and then eventually recovers. I have written about QQQI before and consider it my favorite covered call ETF. QQQI has experienced drawdowns of 20% before and has fully recovered in about 52 trading sessions, all while paying consistent monthly distributions. Investors who did not sell collected monthly income and did not lose any stock appreciation. The parallel to BTCI is direct, as both funds are built using the same strategy and team, just different underlyings. Both funds use an actively managed call strategy designed to collect income while also maintaining exposure to the long-term upside of the underlying asset. BTCI is now where QQQI was back in April of 2025, and the fund has fully recovered from the lows and has since hit all-time highs following the Nasdaq all-time highs. The key difference is the underlying volatility between the two underlying assets. Bitcoin is significantly more volatile than the Nasdaq 100, meaning that BTCI's distributions are much higher, sitting at around 27.8% compared to QQQI's at roughly 14.3% yearly yield. But the structure of the two funds and strategies used is practically the same. I believe once Bitcoin recovers and reaches all-time highs again, we will see BTCI's performance look very similar to QQQI's sharp recovery. Current Dip and Projections The current entry point looks better the more we break it down. BTCI is currently trading at around $36.50. With a 52-week range of $30.89 to $65.97. That puts it much closer to the lows than the highs, in a range that nearly doubled at its peak. The latest monthly distributions came in at $0.80 per share; at today's price, this shows a yield of 26.8%. That is not the 38% trailing figure some screens are showing; that number is inflated by significantly larger payouts when the price of BTCI was much higher. The current setup, choppy price action, macro uncertainty, and geopolitical tension are exactly when this strategy shines. The fund is getting paid to sit through the noise and wait for a recovery. BTCI won’t capture all of that upside, since part of it is sold through calls. But it keeps generating income along the way and still benefits when NAV recovers. You’re earning roughly a 27% forward yield while waiting for that to play out. Investors in similar income-focused strategies saw this before. During the April 2025 drawdown, holders of QQQI collected income through the decline and saw a full recovery within a few months. BTCI is now sitting at a similar kind of turning point. Let's take a look at three scenarios, using a $100,000 initial investment in BTCI at the market price at the time of writing ($36.43) with all of the monthly income reinvested. Projections : Base Case - NAV appreciates 3%/yr. Distributions are flat. Modest recovery, stable income. Year End Shares End Price Portfolio Value Annual Income Dist/Share 0 2,745 $36.43 $100,000 - $9.36 1 3,430 $37.52 $128,693 $25,693 $9.36 2 4,260 $38.65 $164,656 $32,102 $9.36 3 5,262 $39.81 $209,473 $39,877 $9.36 4 6,463 $41.00 $265,010 $49,253 $9.36 5 7,896 $42.23 $333,456 $60,496 $9.36 6 9,595 $43.50 $417,364 $73,904 $9.36 7 11,599 $44.80 $519,692 $89,807 $9.36 8 13,952 $46.15 $643,851 $108,568 $9.36 9 16,699 $47.53 $793,755 $130,588 $9.36 10 19,892 $48.96 $973,870 $156,303 $9.36 Bull Case - NAV appreciates 10.6%/yr, reaching $100/share by year 10. Distributions grow 8%/yr as sustained volatility generates richer option premiums. Year End Shares End Price Portfolio Value Annual Income Dist/Share 0 2,745 $36.43 $100,000 - $9.36 1 3,434 $40.30 $138,374 $27,749 $10.11 2 4,274 $44.58 $190,562 $37,486 $10.92 3 5,296 $49.56 $261,208 $50,398 $11.79 4 6,532 $54.56 $356,404 $67,443 $12.73 5 8,021 $60.36 $484,111 $89,838 $13.75 6 9,805 $66.77 $654,683 $119,134 $14.85 7 11,934 $73.86 $881,530 $157,286 $16.04 8 14,465 $81.71 $1,181,953 $206,759 $17.32 9 17,459 $90.40 $1,578,182 $270,644 $18.71 10 20,987 $100.00 $2,098,664 $352,797 $20.21 Bear Case: NAV declines 4%/yr. Distributions compress 4%/yr as lower volatility compresses option premiums. Year End Shares End Price Portfolio Value Annual Income Dist/Share 0 2,745 $36.43 $100,000 - $9.36 1 3,450 $34.97 $120,665 $24,665 $8.99 2 4,337 $33.57 $145,601 $29,763 $8.63 3 5,451 $32.23 $175,690 $35,913 $8.28 4 6,852 $30.94 $211,998 $43,335 $7.95 5 8,612 $29.70 $255,808 $52,290 $7.63 6 10,825 $28.52 $308,671 $63,096 $7.33 7 13,606 $27.38 $372,459 $76,135 $7.03 8 17,101 $26.28 $449,430 $91,869 $6.75 9 21,495 $25.23 $542,306 $110,854 $6.48 10 27,018 $24.22 $654,376 $133,762 $6.22 Summary: Scenario Year 5 Value Year 10 Value Year 5 Income Year 10 Income Total Distributions Bull $484,111 $2,098,664 $89,838 $352,797 $1,379,533 Base $333,456 $973,870 $60,496 $156,303 $766,592 Bear $255,808 $654,376 $52,290 $133,762 $661,681 These projections start with a $100,000 investment at today’s price of $36.43 per share, with every distribution reinvested through a DRIP. In the bull case, we see BTCI reach $100 per share by year ten, assuming a strong Bitcoin recovery and elevated volatility keeping premiums high. In this setup, investors will collect more than 350,000 in year 10 alone, and the portfolio will reach over 2M. The base case does not see much price appreciation, and most of the returns are coming from the options strategy at work. NAV only grows 3% annually while distributions remain flat. Even at this slow pace, the portfolio compounds to $974,000 over the years, producing over $150,000 in annual income by year 10. The bear case paints a pretty tough scenario for BTCI. This scenario assumes Bitcoin's price does not recover and the fund has to make do with a declining asset and shrinking volatility. NAV declines by 4% per year, and distributions gradually shrink, reflecting weaker price action and lower volatility. Even then, reinvestment keeps adding shares at lower prices. By year ten, the portfolio still reaches about $654,000, with annual income climbing to around $133,000. Across all three outcomes, the same engine is at work. Monthly income buys more shares, those shares produce more income, and over time, the compounding does the heavy lifting. Risks The risks with BTCI have not changed much since my last article , but now we do have some more data on BTCI. BTCI is not a hedge against bitcoin downturns. When Bitcoin falls into a prolonged decline, we will also see BTCI fall as well. The options overlay does provide income, not protection against price decline. The strategy does not hedge against Bitcoin by buying puts or shorting it in any other way; it just sells calls against the underlying. Distributions have also not been the most consistent; since launch, monthly payouts have ranged from about $0.8 to $1.50 per share. This is not exactly fixed income. Seeking Alpha These payments come from harvesting volatility, so they move with market conditions. If you plan on using BTCI's monthly income to retire, this is something you have to keep in mind. The capped upside has also not changed. If Bitcoin rallies hard, it will outperform BTCI. This trade-off is built into the strategy; you give up some upside in hard rallies for income. One new potential risk I would like to mention is the concentration of Bitcoin holders linked in crypto-linked companies. There has been a new wave of companies taking on debt via convertible bonds to buy Bitcoin. The biggest one is MicroStrategy, now holding over 800,000 Bitcoin at today's prices, valued at over 64 billion, nearly 4% of the total supply of Bitcoin. If the price declines rapidly and the pressure builds at some point, the company would have to service the debt, potentially having to sell Bitcoin. This could create a tsunami of companies and people getting margin calls and having to liquidate their bitcoin holdings. Although this new risk is important to keep note of, it is not something that keeps me up at night. This does not come from Bitcoin’s core design; it is coming from how the broader system around it is structured. Conclusion When I first wrote about BTCI, I said it solved a simple problem for Bitcoin investors who also want a monthly income. This idea remains true and, in my opinion been confirmed. The fund held up better than Bitcoin during the drawdown, kept paying monthly distributions, and grew its AUM from $556 million to over $1.1 billion in a tough market. I believe a Bitcoin recovery is inevitable, and BTCI will recover with it. QQQI has already shown us NEOS' strategy works when the underlying starts to recover. Same issuer and same core strategy, kept generating cash flow through the dips and recovered when the underlying bounced back. BTCI now sits in a similar spot. Trading near the bottom of its range, waiting for Bitcoin to bounce back. If you liked BTCI at $60, it looks even better at $36. I'm adding to my position here and rating BTCI a strong buy. For patient, income-focused investors who still believe in Bitcoin over the long run, this pullback stands out as an opportunity.