YieldMax quietly added a second SpaceX income fund to the shelf on July 15: the YieldMax SPCX Option Income Strategy ETF (YSPC), trading on NYSE Arca with weekly distributions. Its first payout landed July 29 — 100% income, 0% return of capital, which is the kind of headline number that gets an income investor’s attention fast.

We reviewed the other SpaceX income ETF back in June: Kurv’s XSHP, built on a synthetic long position plus call writing. That review told readers to wait and watch the AUM. Seven weeks later, the watching paid off with an answer nobody wants: XSHP’s net assets have slid to $3.26 million. That’s not a soft patch. That’s the exact danger zone we flagged in our piece on the June closure wave, where 13 income ETFs got liquidated in a single week for, in YieldMax’s own words, “inability to achieve scale.”

So now there are two SpaceX income ETFs, one brand new and one already showing warning signs. Here’s how they actually compare, and which one deserves your money — if either does.

Quick Verdict: YSPC vs. XSHP

Factor	YSPC (YieldMax)	XSHP (Kurv)
Exchange	NYSE Arca	Cboe BZX
Launch Date	July 15, 2026	June 17, 2026
Strategy	Call spreads sold against SPCX	Synthetic long SPCX + call writing
Distribution Frequency	Weekly	Monthly
Expense Ratio	1.01%	0.99%
First Distribution	July 29, 2026 — 100% income, 0% ROC	June 2026 — no meaningful track record yet
Net Assets	~$2.08M (Aug 6, 2026)	~$3.26M (Aug 4, 2026)
Closure Risk	Too new to score, but sub-$50M territory already	Already inside the sub-$5M near-disqualifier zone

Best for: Investors who already want weekly-cadence income and can stomach the fact that both funds are, right now, tiny.

Skip if: You need distribution certainty or you’re allergic to putting money into a fund that could be a liquidation headline within a year.

What Is YSPC?

YSPC is an actively managed ETF that generates weekly income by selling call spreads on SpaceX (SPCX) common stock, without ever holding SPCX shares directly. The fund pairs Treasury bills with SPCX options contracts, aiming to harvest premium from the stock’s post-IPO volatility while keeping some capped participation in price gains. Its first distribution, paid July 29, arrived at $0.4264 per share — entirely income, zero return of capital.

That zero-ROC detail matters more than it looks. Nearly every YieldMax fund we’ve covered on this site eventually leans on return-of-capital distributions once implied volatility settles — MSTY’s running 98%+ ROC on its most recent distribution, with sibling funds NVDY and MSFO close behind at 94% and 91%. A 100% income first payout is a good start. One payout is also not a trend. Ask again in six months.

The “First ETF” Claim Doesn’t Hold Up

YieldMax’s launch materials, and most of the wire coverage that followed, describe YSPC as the first ETF built to generate income from SpaceX stock options. That framing is doing some work it can’t back up.

XSHP has been selling premium against SPCX volatility since June 17 — a full month before YSPC existed. Listed SPCX options themselves started trading June 16, the day before XSHP launched. So the actual “first” here, by any reasonable reading, is Kurv, not YieldMax.

What’s true is that the two funds construct their SPCX exposure differently. YSPC sells call spreads directly against the stock. XSHP builds a synthetic long (buying calls, selling puts at the same strike) and then writes additional calls on top of that synthetic position. Different plumbing, same underlying bet: SPCX volatility is rich enough right now to fund a distribution. Calling one of them “first” because the mechanics differ is technically defensible and still misleading to anyone who read a headline and assumed XSHP didn’t exist yet.

Weekly vs. Monthly: Does It Actually Matter?

YSPC’s weekly schedule sounds like an upgrade. In practice, distribution frequency changes cash flow timing, not total income. A fund paying $400 across four weekly checks and a fund paying $400 once a month deliver the same total — the weekly version just smooths it into a paycheck-like rhythm, which some retirees genuinely prefer for budgeting.

Where frequency does matter: volatility. Weekly distributions from a fund selling short-dated options against a stock as jumpy as SPCX will bounce around week to week more than a monthly figure smooths out. If IV spikes on a Starship test or a government contract headline, one week’s check could run well above trend. The following week could undershoot. Monthly distributions average that noise out before it reaches your account statement — you just don’t see the volatility, not that it isn’t there underneath.

Neither cadence is objectively better. Weekly suits someone treating distributions like income to spend. Monthly suits someone who’d rather not watch the number swing.

The Fee Comparison Isn’t the Real Story

ETF	Strategy	Expense Ratio
YSPC (YieldMax)	Call spreads on SPCX	1.01%
XSHP (Kurv)	Synthetic long + call writing	0.99%
JEPI (JPMorgan)	S&P 500 covered call	0.35%
TSLY (YieldMax)	Tesla option income	0.99%

A two-basis-point gap between YSPC and XSHP is noise — $2 a year on a $10,000 position. Both funds charge roughly triple what a diversified covered-call fund like JEPI charges, which is standard for the single-stock synthetic income category, not a red flag specific to either one. If you’re choosing between YSPC and XSHP on expense ratio alone, you’re solving the wrong problem.

The Real Problem: Both Funds Are Tiny

Here’s the story the launch press releases don’t tell you. XSHP’s net assets sat at $3.26 million as of August 4, 2026. YSPC’s sat at roughly $2.08 million as of August 6. Neither number supports a fund long-term.

Run the math the way our closure-shakeout piece laid out: at a 1% expense ratio, $3M in AUM generates about $30,000 in annual revenue for the issuer. That doesn’t cover index licensing, options execution, market-maker relationships, and compliance overhead for a single fund — not even close. FactSet found that 38% of U.S. ETFs run under $50M in assets, and most of those are unprofitable to operate. XSHP and YSPC are both an order of magnitude below even that lower bar.

How do you screen a new fund for closure risk?

1. Check AUM against the $50M line. Below it is a flag. Below $20M, per our own screening framework, is a near-disqualifier absent a specific reason to override it. XSHP, at $3.26M, isn’t close to either threshold — it’s already deep past them.
2. Look for growth since launch, not just a snapshot. XSHP launched at whatever its seed capital was in June and has had seven weeks to build assets. $3.26M after seven weeks isn’t early-stage noise. It’s a fund that isn’t attracting money.
3. Watch the bid-ask spread. A widening spread on light volume is market makers pricing in the same closure risk you’re calculating — often before any announcement.
4. Compare against the nearest large competitor running the same mechanic. YieldMax’s flagship single-stock funds like MSTY carry billions in AUM. When a much smaller fund on a similar structure can’t scale, assets tend to consolidate toward the bigger, more liquid name — starving the smaller one further.
5. Know the issuer’s closure history. YieldMax closed four funds (ABNY, DISO, FEAT, FIVY) the same week Kurv launched XSHP. That’s not a knock on YSPC specifically. It’s a reminder that the same company launching YSPC has already demonstrated it will pull the plug when a fund doesn’t scale.

XSHP checks off nearly every warning sign on that list already. YSPC is two weeks old, so most of these don’t have enough data to evaluate yet — but starting at $2.08M isn’t a strong opening position either.

Neither Fund Owns SpaceX for the Dividend

Worth saying plainly, because it’s easy to lose in the fee tables and AUM numbers: SpaceX pays no dividend. It’s a young public company plowing capital into Starship and Starlink, not distributing cash to shareholders. Every dollar YSPC and XSHP pay out comes from selling options against SPCX’s volatility — not from any income the underlying business generates.

That’s not a flaw specific to these two funds. It’s how the entire single-stock option-income category works, from TSLY to MSTY to every Kurv product. But it matters more here because SPCX is nine weeks removed from its IPO, with implied volatility still elevated and unsettled. The income both funds are currently paying reflects a volatility premium that’s near its post-IPO peak. As SPCX trades longer and price discovery matures, that premium is likely to compress — for both funds, regardless of which one you picked.

Who Should Consider Either Fund

You already want SPCX exposure and you’re comfortable treating both funds as speculative, small positions. Neither YSPC nor XSHP should be a core holding at this stage. Either can be a satellite position sized so a closure notice doesn’t wreck your year.

You’re in a tax-advantaged account. A forced liquidation is a non-event in an IRA — proceeds land at NAV and you reinvest. In a taxable account, closure is an involuntary sale you didn’t choose, on top of income that’s already taxed as ordinary.

You want weekly cash flow specifically. That’s YSPC’s actual differentiator over XSHP, more than strategy or expense ratio. If paycheck-style timing matters to your budget, that’s a real reason to prefer YSPC — not the marketing claim about being “first.”

Who Should Skip Both

Anyone chasing a yield number off a headline. YSPC has one data point. XSHP has a few months of monthly payments and a shrinking asset base. Neither has enough history to treat the current yield as durable.

Capital-preservation investors. Both funds cap upside via options while carrying full downside exposure to a single, extremely volatile stock. That’s the opposite of capital preservation by design.

Anyone unwilling to read a closure notice. Given XSHP’s current AUM, an issuer decision to wind it down inside the next year wouldn’t be a surprise. If you can’t stomach that possibility, this entire category — not just XSHP — is the wrong fit.

The Bottom Line

YSPC isn’t the “first” SpaceX income ETF, whatever the press release says — XSHP beat it to market by a month. What YSPC actually offers is a weekly distribution schedule and a clean first payout, against a fund that’s two weeks old with $2.08 million in assets. XSHP offers a longer track record and a monthly rhythm, against a fund whose $3.26 million in net assets sits well inside the zone where issuers start pulling the plug.

Neither is a clear winner. Both are small, both are new, and both are extracting income from the same source: SPCX’s still-settling post-IPO volatility, not any cash SpaceX itself is distributing. If you want SpaceX income exposure today, size the position like the speculative bet it is, and don’t be shocked if one or both of these tickers shows up in a future closure roundup on this site.

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YSPC fund details from the YieldMax YSPC product page and YieldMax’s official launch announcement via GlobeNewswire. XSHP fund details from the Kurv XSHP product page and stockanalysis.com. Net asset figures as of August 4-6, 2026 per fund-level data on stockanalysis.com. This is not financial or investment advice — verify current fund data before investing.