VanEck will relaunch its Gaming ETF (BJK) as the VanEck Degen Economy ETF on April 8, 2026, repositioning the product to track the MarketVector Degen Economy Index and give investors exposure to digital gaming, gambling, millennial finance and gig-economy businesses. The revamped ETF centers its mandate on internet-native consumer behavior and speculative digital markets, with eligibility conditioned on companies generating at least 50% of their revenue from defined “degen economy” activities.
Index construction and sector focus
The rebrand repurposes a low-performing gaming vehicle into a targeted play on internet-native behaviors by aligning it with an index that enforces a 50% revenue threshold from “degen economy” activities. By tracking the MarketVector Degen Economy Index, the fund formalizes exposure to businesses built around rapid product cycles, sentiment-driven adoption and discretionary digital spending, turning what was a narrow gaming sleeve into a rules-based, thematically coherent allocation. Eric Balchunas of Bloomberg underscored the novelty of the shift, noting that, to his knowledge, it will be the first fund or ETF with “Degen” in the name, a signal that mainstream asset managers are explicitly translating internet subculture into investable exposure.
The index aggregates companies into three thematic clusters: Millennial Finance, Gig Economy & Online Forums, and Digital Gambling, Betting & Gaming. Millennial Finance spans digital brokerages, crypto and token exchanges, neobanks, consumer credit scoring, buy-now-pay-later services and payments providers, while Gig Economy & Online Forums captures ride-hailing, delivery platforms, freelance marketplaces and peer-to-peer services. The digital gambling and gaming sleeve includes online gambling operators, iGaming software, lottery and casino platforms, game developers and sports-data analytics firms, with all index constituents required to derive at least half of their revenue from these activities to qualify.
Growth expectations embedded in the thesis are explicitly high. The product narrative highlights a 53.7% compound annual growth rate projection for the gaming and betting cluster through 2030, reinforcing the ETF’s growth bias while acknowledging the elevated cyclicality and adoption risk that accompany such forecasts.
VanEck situates the Degen Economy ETF within a broader push into digital-asset-adjacent strategies, following recent filings and approvals for a Solana ETF and proposals for liquid staking products. The firm frames the rebrand as an explicit move to formalize allocations to internet-native consumer businesses, seeking to monetize shifting online behavior through a regulated, exchange-listed wrapper that remains recognizable to institutional gatekeepers.
“Degen” in this context describes sectors characterized by heightened volatility, rapid product iteration and sentiment-driven participation. Because many of the underlying business models depend on discretionary consumer outlays, macroeconomic slowdowns and regulatory interventions in areas such as online gambling, crypto exchanges and BNPL can compress revenue quickly and trigger abrupt valuation resets. For traders, the ETF offers concentrated, event-sensitive sector exposure with inherently high turnover and concentration risk, while for corporate treasuries and institutional allocators it provides a regulated channel into digital-native revenue streams that still demands tighter liquidity management, calibrated position sizing and scenario stress testing.
The rebrand is substantively more than a name change; it marks a strategic pivot toward internet-native sectors and speculative digital markets under a clear index methodology and fee profile. VanEck’s Degen Economy ETF formalizes an institutional pathway into fast-growing but volatile digital businesses, concentrating thematic upside and regulatory, behavioral and market-structure risks in a single diversified vehicle.