BITO Dividend Calculator
Dividend growth rate (CAGR)
| Year | Yield | Div / share | Annual income | Yield on cost | Cumulative income | Portfolio value | Shares |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 56.9% | $4.74 | $4,257 | 34.3% | $4,257 | $13,176 | 1582.85 |
| 2 | 81.4% | $5.07 | $8,025 | 54.2% | $12,282 | $18,775 | 3015.81 |
| 3 | 116.5% | $5.42 | $16,360 | 95.1% | $28,641 | $30,096 | 6463.70 |
| 4 | 166.7% | $5.80 | $37,517 | 191.4% | $66,158 | $56,669 | 16273.23 |
| 5 | 238.5% | $6.21 | $101,067 | 459.4% | $167,225 | $130,926 | 50270.52 |
| 6 | 341.2% | $6.65 | $334,065 | 1369.1% | $501,290 | $385,856 | 198093.02 |
| 7 | 488.1% | $7.11 | $1,408,545 | 5255.8% | $1,909,835 | $1,496,026 | 1026926.08 |
| 8 | 698.3% | $7.61 | $7,813,119 | 26757.3% | $9,722,954 | $7,807,163 | 7165554.44 |
| 9 | 999.0% | $8.14 | $58,333,608 | 184600.0% | $68,056,561 | $55,761,169 | 68429743.14 |
| 10 | 1429.3% | $8.71 | $596,070,630 | 1753148.9% | $664,127,191 | $551,805,065 | 905430637.51 |
Year 1-10 dividend income (preview)
Based on a $10,000 initial investment with $200.00 monthly contributions, DRIP on.
Historical dividends per share
Recent dividends
| Ex-date | Cash amount | TTM yield | Fwd yield | Share price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-05-01 | $0.02 | 65.2% | 1.7% | $10.74 |
| 2026-04-01 | $0.01 | 80.5% | 0.8% | $9.36 |
| 2026-03-02 | $0.01 | 90.3% | 1.8% | $9.53 |
| 2026-02-02 | $0.01 | 88.3% | 1.1% | $10.79 |
| 2025-12-24 | $0.74 | 78.5% | 73.5% | $12.13 |
| 2025-12-01 | $0.78 | 86.2% | 73.7% | $12.63 |
| 2025-11-03 | $0.84 | 60.5% | 60.2% | $16.72 |
| 2025-10-01 | $0.76 | 52.9% | 46.7% | $19.42 |
| 2025-09-02 | $0.86 | 61.8% | 54.0% | $19.12 |
| 2025-08-01 | $1.21 | 53.4% | 70.8% | $20.50 |
| 2025-07-01 | $0.78 | 55.2% | 46.0% | $20.27 |
| 2025-06-02 | $1.00 | 65.3% | 57.1% | $20.95 |
Source: Polygon.io. Last 12 dividend distributions, most recent first. TTM yield = sum of last 12 months of payments ÷ share price on ex-date. Forward yield = this payment × detected payout frequency ÷ share price on ex-date.
About BITO
BITO — the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF — is a futures-based fund issued by ProShares in October 2021 as the first US-listed Bitcoin ETF. The fund does not hold spot Bitcoin. It holds front-month CME Bitcoin futures contracts and rolls those contracts forward as they approach expiry, maintaining approximately one-month effective exposure to Bitcoin price moves. The fund's NAV tracks Bitcoin's price approximately but not exactly, with a structural drag (or occasional uplift) from the futures-roll mechanics — when the Bitcoin futures curve is in contango (front-month cheaper than back-month), rolling the position forward incurs a small cost each cycle; when the curve is in backwardation, the roll is a small positive contributor. The spot ETFs that launched in January 2024 (IBIT, FBTC, ARKB, and others) hold actual Bitcoin and do not have the same roll-cost structure. BITO predates them by more than two years and remains a high-volume, liquid product, but the spot funds are now the cleaner vehicles for direct Bitcoin price exposure.
BITO is NOT a traditional dividend instrument. The "distributions" are roll-yield artifacts of the futures strategy combined with periodic capital-gains distributions, NOT corporate earnings or interest. The dividend calculator's growth-rate projection has no meaningful basis. Treat as a speculative-income strategy on Bitcoin futures. The fund's distribution stream began as periodic and unpredictable, then in 2023 ProShares shifted BITO to a monthly distribution cadence with the intent of harvesting and distributing the income generated by the futures-management activity and short-term Treasury collateral held alongside the futures position. Several months produced distributions in the multiple-dollars-per-share range; other months produced zero or near-zero distributions. The headline trailing-twelve-month yield, which has at various times exceeded thirty, fifty, or sixty percent, is a function of Bitcoin's realized volatility, the shape of the futures curve, and capital-gains realization within the fund — not of any underlying dividend or interest-payment stream.
Understanding "yield" on BITO requires understanding what is being measured. The distributions are short-term capital gains and other income realized inside the fund and passed through to shareholders to maintain regulated-investment-company tax status. They are not analogous to a corporate dividend (cash paid out of operating earnings) or to a bond coupon (contractual interest on debt). When Bitcoin is in a strong upward trend, BITO's futures positions tend to realize gains, the fund may distribute a portion of those gains, and the trailing-twelve-month "yield" runs high. When Bitcoin is range-bound or trending downward, distributions can be small or zero. This means BITO's yield is approximately a leveraged read on Bitcoin's volatility and direction during the distribution-calculation window, not a yield in the income-investor sense. A forward income projection based on the trailing yield assumes a continuation of recent Bitcoin price action, which is structurally a poor assumption.
How BITO pays distributions
BITO has been paying distributions monthly since the 2023 cadence change, though the per-share amount is highly variable from month to month and several months in any given year may produce zero distribution depending on the fund's realized income inside that period. The ex-dividend date typically falls near the end of a calendar month with the pay date a few business days later, though the specific dates and even whether a distribution occurs in any particular month are not on a fixed contractual schedule the way a corporate quarterly dividend is — they depend on the realized income picture inside the fund.
The distribution character is generally short-term capital gains, which receive ordinary-income tax treatment regardless of holding period at the shareholder level. There is no qualified-dividend rate available on BITO distributions, and high-bracket holders in taxable accounts pay their full marginal rate on the cash distribution stream. The futures positions themselves are subject to Section 1256 60/40 treatment inside the fund (the fund's own gains and losses on the futures contracts are taxed sixty-percent long-term and forty-percent short-term capital gains at the fund level regardless of holding period), but the distributions that pass through to shareholders are characterized at the shareholder level by what category of income drove the distribution — and the predominant character has historically been short-term capital gains and other income, not Section 1256 pass-through. The exact split is reported on the year-end 1099-DIV and can vary substantially across calendar years.
For taxable-account holders, the combination of variable distribution timing and ordinary-income character makes BITO meaningfully less tax-efficient than holding spot Bitcoin directly (which has no distributions and produces only realized capital gains when sold, with long-term-capital-gains treatment available for positions held more than a year). Tax-advantaged accounts (IRA, Roth IRA, 401(k)) sidestep the character question entirely — distributions reinvest without current tax consequences. The dividend-calculator framework on this page can model BITO's nominal cash distributions with DRIP and a chosen DGR, but the inputs should be treated with extreme caution: BITO's per-share distribution does not have a structural growth driver, and a multi-year non-zero DGR projection is modeling a path of Bitcoin price action and futures-curve shape, not a continuation of a dividend-growth policy.
Who BITO suits
BITO does not fit the standard income-instrument profile. The headline yield is large in periods when Bitcoin has been volatile and trending upward, but the realized cash flow is unpredictable from month to month, the distribution character is tax-disadvantaged in taxable accounts, and the underlying NAV tracks Bitcoin price action with the additional structural friction of futures-roll mechanics. For an investor who wants Bitcoin price exposure, the spot Bitcoin ETFs (IBIT, FBTC, ARKB, GBTC) launched in January 2024 are now the cleaner vehicles — they hold actual Bitcoin, have no roll-cost structure, no distribution stream to model, and produce only long-term capital gains for holders who realize after a year. For an investor who wants Bitcoin price exposure plus a yield-like cash stream, the structural answer is that there is no clean way to get both, and BITO's distribution stream is more accurately described as a periodic harvest of intra-fund gains than as a yield on a stable underlying.
BITO is, in practice, useful for a narrow set of cases: an investor who wants Bitcoin exposure in a futures-based ETF wrapper (perhaps for specific tax-account or fund-availability reasons), an investor who wants to receive periodic cash distributions from a Bitcoin-correlated position without manually realizing gains, or an investor who specifically wants the regulated-1940-Act-ETF structure that BITO offers. For income-portfolio construction in the dividend-investor sense — building a sleeve of holdings that produce a reliable, growing, predictable income stream — BITO is not a fit, and the calculator on this page should be used with that understanding. The output is mathematically correct given the inputs, but the inputs themselves have no underlying business-model anchor, and a long-horizon projection at a non-zero DGR is approximately a projection of a Bitcoin scenario that should be modeled directly rather than embedded in a yield projection. As with any speculative-asset exposure, this content is educational only; it is not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold BITO.
Hypothetical scenarios
Scenario 1: $10,000 in BITO during a Bitcoin bull window
Consider a hypothetical purchase of $10,000 of BITO during a Bitcoin bull window — the kind of environment where the trailing-twelve-month distribution yield runs in the forty-to-sixty-percent range because Bitcoin has been volatile and trending upward, the fund has realized substantial short-term gains on its futures positions, and the monthly distribution cadence has produced several large per-share amounts in recent months. At a fifty-percent trailing yield, the calculator projects a starting annualized cash distribution of roughly $5,000 on the $10,000 position, paid as variable monthly amounts. With DRIP enabled, the reinvested distributions would compound the share count quickly — though the share price is highly volatile because it tracks Bitcoin's price, so the dollar value of the position depends as much on Bitcoin's path as on the income stream.
This scenario illustrates how BITO's headline yield can be large and the calculator output can look attractive — and also why the output should be read with extreme caution. The fifty-percent yield is not a forward-looking expected return on a stable underlying. It is a backward-looking measurement of the cash distributed across the trailing twelve months, divided by current NAV. If the next twelve months feature a different Bitcoin regime — a flat or declining market, a low-volatility window, a contango-heavy futures curve — the realized distribution stream can collapse to a small fraction of the trailing figure, with several months of zero distribution. Meanwhile, the share price tracks Bitcoin downward (or sideways), so both the income line and the principal value can deteriorate together. A multi-year compounding projection that holds the trailing yield constant is modeling a continuation of the most recent Bitcoin regime, which is a structurally weak base for long-horizon planning.
The illustrative outcome is therefore not a precise dollar figure. The structural point is that BITO's distribution stream is a periodic harvest of intra-fund gains realized on Bitcoin futures positions during favorable windows, not a yield in the income-investor sense. The right way to use the calculator on this page is to run it across multiple yield scenarios — a high-yield bull window, a low-yield flat window, a zero-distribution year — and to recognize that the income line is fully contingent on Bitcoin's behavior across the forward window. Investors using BITO for actual Bitcoin price exposure would generally be better served by the spot Bitcoin ETFs (IBIT, FBTC, ARKB) launched in January 2024, which hold actual Bitcoin, have no roll-cost structure, no distribution stream to model, and produce only long-term capital gains for holders who realize after a year of holding.
Scenario 2: model limits — why a long-horizon BITO projection breaks down
Consider the structural limits of running the calculator on BITO across a ten-year or twenty-five-year horizon. The calculator's mechanics assume a stable underlying yield with an annualized growth rate applied year-over-year — a model that fits a conventional dividend stock paying a quarterly cash dividend out of operating earnings, where the per-share rate increases on a regular cadence as earnings grow. BITO violates several of those assumptions simultaneously, and the projection should be interpreted accordingly.
First, the distribution stream is not a yield on a stable underlying. The cash that BITO distributes comes from realized short-term gains on its CME Bitcoin futures positions and from short-term Treasury collateral interest, not from any operating cash flow of an underlying business. The "yield" measurement on the calculator page is a trailing-twelve-month figure divided by current NAV, and it can swing by a factor of five or ten across different windows depending on Bitcoin's path. There is no structural reason for the trailing yield in any given period to predict the yield in any subsequent period.
Second, the per-share distribution does not have a growth driver in the dividend-policy sense. Conventional dividend stocks raise their per-share rate as earnings grow, and a five-or-ten-percent annual DGR is a plausible model for a mature dividend payer with a stable business. BITO's per-share distribution rises and falls with Bitcoin's volatility regime — there is no Board of Directors committing to annual increases, no payout policy targeting a particular percentage of earnings, and no underlying business whose earnings progression supports a growth trajectory. The calculator's DGR input is a mathematical placeholder; a non-zero multi-year DGR for BITO is modeling an assumption about Bitcoin's path, not a continuation of a dividend-growth policy.
Third, NAV is tightly correlated with Bitcoin's price, which is one of the most volatile mainstream assets globally. The calculator implicitly assumes the principal value compounds at the share-count growth rate (under DRIP) — but if Bitcoin enters a multi-year drawdown, the principal value declines even as the share count grows, and the dollar income arriving each month falls because the per-share rate is calculated against a lower NAV. A long-horizon projection that ignores this principal-value sensitivity overstates the realized dollar income meaningfully in any Bitcoin-downturn scenario.
The honest reading is that the calculator can mechanically produce a projection for BITO, but the projection is approximately a projection of a specific Bitcoin scenario rather than a continuation of a yield-and-DGR structure. Investors who want Bitcoin price exposure should model that exposure directly using a spot Bitcoin ETF and a Bitcoin price scenario; investors who want a high-yield monthly income stream should look at quality-screened or covered-call income ETFs (JEPI, JEPQ, QQQI) with operating-economics anchors that the calculator framework can reasonably model. BITO sits in a third category where neither framing fully fits, and the calculator on this page should be used with that understanding. Educational only; not a forecast.
Sources & methodology
Dividend history and price data come from Polygon.io's reference and aggregates endpoints. Forward yield is computed as the sum of the most recent four cash distributions divided by the previous-close share price. The dividend growth rate shown on this page is the compound annual growth rate of total annual distributions across the available history in this snapshot.
Last updated: 2026-05-15.
Information here is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Past dividend history does not guarantee future payments. Verify all figures with the issuer or a registered financial advisor before making investment decisions.