Appetite for ether ETFs has been tepid since their launch last July, but that could change if some of the regulatory wrinkles holding them back get “resolved,” according to Robert Mitchnick, head of digital assets at BlackRock.

There’s a widely held view that the success of ether ETFs has been “meh” compared to the explosive growth in funds tracking bitcoin, Mitchnick said at the Digital Asset Summit in New York City Thursday. Though he sees that as a “misconception,” he acknowledged that the inability to earn a staking yield on the funds is likely one thing holding them back.

“There’s obviously a next phase in the potential evolution of [ether ETFs],” he said. “An ETF, it’s turned out, has been a really, really compelling vehicle through which to hold bitcoin for lots of different investor types. There’s no question it’s less perfect for ETH today without staking. A staking yield is a meaningful part of how you can generate investment return in this space, and all the [ether] ETFs at launch did not have staking.”

Staking is a way for investors to earn passive yield on their cryptocurrency holdings by locking tokens up on the network for a period of time. It allows investors to put their crypto to work if they’re not planning to sell it anytime soon.

But Mitchnick doesn’t expect a simple fix.

“It’s not a particularly easy problem,” he explained. “It’s not as simple as … a new administration just green-lighting something and then boom, we’re all good, off to the races. There are a lot of fairly complex challenges that have to be figured out, but if that can get figured out, then it’s going to be sort of a step change upward in terms of what we see the activity around those products is.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission has historically viewed some staking services as potential unregistered securities offerings under the Howey Test – which is used to determine whether an asset is an investment contract and therefore, a security. But a more crypto friendly SEC is moving swiftly to reverse the damage done to the industry under the previous regime. Its newly formed crypto task force is scheduled to kick off a roundtable series Friday focused on defining the security status of digital assets.

Ether has been one of the most beaten up cryptocurrencies in recent months. It’s down more than 40% year to date as it has struggled with conflicting and difficult-to-comprehend narratives, weaker revenue since its last big technical upgrade and increasing competition from Solana. Standard Chartered this week slashed its price target on the coin by more than half.

Mitchnick said the negativity is “overdone.”

“ETH … at the second grade level is easier to define … but at the 10th grade level is a lot harder,” he said. “Second grade level: it’s a technology innovation story. … Beyond that, it does get a little more vast, a little more complicated. It’s about being a bet on blockchain adoption and innovation. That’s part of the thesis as we communicate it to clients.”

“There are three [use cases] that we focus on that have a lot of resonance with our client base: it’s a bet to some extent on tokenization, on stablecoin adoption, and on decentralized financing,” he added. “It does take a fair bit of education, and we’ve been on that journey, but it’s going to take more time.”

BlackRock is the issuer of the iShares Ethereum Trust ETF. It also has a tokenized money market fund, known as BUIDL, which it initially launched a year ago on Ethereum and has since expanded to several other networks including Aptos and Polygon.

Tesla is recalling more than 46,000 of its Cybertrucks due to a cosmetic exterior trim panel that it said can “delaminate and detach from the vehicle,” potentially becoming a road hazard and “increasing the risk of a crash.”

The recall covers an exterior part of the vehicle, known as a cant rail, and it will affect all Cybertruck vehicles manufactured from November 2023 to February 2025, Tesla wrote in a filing to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The Cybertrucks’ recall comes at an already-challenging time for the embattled EV maker, whose value has dropped by more than 40% as CEO Elon Musk continues his role as a top advisor in the Trump administration.

Owners of affected vehicles can take their Cybertrucks to Tesla’s service department for free replacement of the cant rail, the company wrote in its filing.

Both Tesla and The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Following the recall filing, The Information reported that the company plans to introduce a new innovation to the Cybertruck’s battery this year that would “sharply decrease battery manufacturing costs,” citing a senior executive.

Huawei’s Pura X, a foldable smartphone launched Thursday, is the first to run the tech giant’s own operating system as it looks to create a viable alternative to Google’s Android and Apple‘s iOS.

When unfolded, the Pura X has a 6.3-inch display, but its 16:10 aspect ratio gives it a wider screen area than most other smartphones on the market. The device folds in half into a compact square and has a 3.5-inch display with a camera at the front.

The Pura X starts at 7,499 Chinese yuan ($1,037).

The device is important for Huawei for two reasons.

Firstly, since the end of 2023, Huawei has seen a revival in its smartphone business in China following U.S. sanctions which had crippled its sales.

Huawei has aggressively launched more unusual devices in an effort to differentiate itself from rivals, including a trifold smartphone.

The Shenzhen-headquartered company also poses a challenge to Apple in China.

Huawei’s market share in the fourth quarter of 2024 rose to 16.2% in China versus 13.7% a year before, according to the International Data Corporation. Apple’s market share declined from 20% to 17.4% over the same period.

The second reason is that the Pura X is the first to run HarmonyOS 5, the latest version of Huawei’s self-developed operating system. It was initially launched in November as HarmonyOS Next and reportedly no longer uses code from the open-source version of Google’s Android operating system.

This is a significant step by Huawei to remove any ties to Google and Android. In 2019, U.S. sanctions forced Google to stop working with Huawei.

The Pura X is also equipped with Xiaoyi, Huawei’s AI assistant which is underpinned by its own artificial intelligence models as well as those developed by DeepSeek.