On August 7, 2026, Grayscale Investments filed three Form RW submissions with the SEC. It withdrew the S-1 registration statements for the Grayscale Cardano Trust ETF, Grayscale Hedera Trust ETF, and Grayscale Polkadot Trust ETF, all within minutes of each other.
The Cardano and Polkadot registrations dated back to August 29, 2025. The Hedera filing dated back to September 9, 2025. All three were pulled with identical language across each Form RW.
Moreover, ADA, HBAR, and DOT sit a tier below Bitcoin and Ethereum in the ETF race, and a tier below the next wave of assets drawing serious filing activity, including Solana, XRP, and Litecoin.
Spot BTC and ETH funds already trade with billions in assets. These tokens mentioned above were further back in that queue, representing bets on demand that has not clearly materialised. Also, pulling all three at once reads as a portfolio decision rather than a reaction to any single token or regulatory development.
Withdrawing preserves the option to refile later without burning resources on a product that is not ready for the market. Earlier removal of related exchange-listing proposals for these same assets preceded the withdrawals, suggesting this was a deliberate and staged pruning rather than a sudden decision.
What Remains Untouched?
Grayscale’s flagship Bitcoin and Ethereum vehicles are completely unaffected. The company continues to develop other altcoin ETFs; Bittensor, Aave, BNB, NEAR, Zcash, and others remain in preliminary registration stages. Some staking-related products have already received approval. This was a narrow cut of three specific altcoin lines.
The reaction across ADA, HBAR, and DOT was essentially flat following the announcement. No significant price movement in any of the three tokens, a clear signal that the market read this correctly as a calculated housekeeping move rather than a bearish statement on the assets themselves.
For Grayscale, the lower-priority products with uncertain demand get cut when the registration cost does not justify the wait. The option to refile remains open. For now, the shelf got narrower, and the remaining products got more attention.
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