The United States Securities and Exchange Commission on 1 July approved Grayscale Investments’ Digital Large Cap Fund for uplisting as a spot exchange-traded fund, clearing the way for the five-asset vehicle—weighted predominantly to bitcoin but also holding ether, XRP, Solana and Cardano—to begin trading on NYSE Arca under the Investment Company Act of 1933. The conversion turns a six-year-old private trust, now managing roughly $755 million, into what Grayscale describes as the largest multi-token digital-asset ETF yet sanctioned in the United States.
XRP, Solana And Cardano ETFs Are ‘Up Next’
For market-structure analyst Nate Geraci, who heads ETF Store and co-hosts the ETF Prime podcast, the ruling is more than the launch of a diversified product. “XRP, SOL & ADA will now be available in a ‘33 Act ETF wrapper,” he wrote on X, adding that the SEC simultaneously issued fresh guidance on crypto-ETF disclosure and registration. “See where this is all heading? Individual spot XRP, SOL, ADA, etc. ETFs up next.” In a separate post he called the moment “full circle,” noting that “after nearly five years of SEC vs Ripple litigation… anyone will be able to easily access XRP in an SEC-regulated investment vehicle.”
Just two years ago the agency was still locked in court with Grayscale after rejecting the firm’s bid to convert the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust; the District of Columbia Circuit ultimately ruled that the SEC’s denial was “arbitrary and capricious,” a decision the Commission declined to appeal and which proved pivotal to January 2024 approvals of spot-bitcoin ETPs. That litigation backdrop makes the regulator’s latest about-face especially striking to policy watchers.
Momentum around single-asset products is already building. When an X user asked Geraci whether spot XRP, SOL and ADA ETFs were “most likely in Q4,” he replied, “I think sooner, but Q4 at latest.”
Separate reporting by Fox Business correspondent Eleanor Terrett indicates that the SEC has begun drafting a “generic listing standard” that would let exchanges list token-based ETFs without filing the customary Rule 19b-4—provided a coin meets thresholds that may include market capitalization, trading volume and liquidity. Under the working proposal, issuers could file a simple S-1 prospectus and launch 75 days later, a pathway that would drastically reduce procedural friction for new products. The agency declined to comment on the deliberations.
Bloomberg Intelligence senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas argues that such a framework would open the floodgates. “This is what everyone wants… and why we’re so bullish—95 percent on most of the coins—for approval,” he posted, predicting listing standards “loose enough where the vast majority of the top-50 coins would be ok to be ETF-ized.”
His colleague James Seyffart injected a note of caution, pointing out that “the demand for some of these coins in an ETF wrapper is a whole other question,” a reminder that regulatory green lights do not necessarily guarantee commercial success.
Whether the first single-asset altcoin ETFs hit the tape before year-end will depend on how quickly exchanges, issuers and the SEC finalise the proposed standards, and on how fast S-1 filings can be turned around. Recently, Bloomberg’s ETF experts Blachunas and Seyffart updated their approval odds for XRP, Solana and Cardano to 95%. Overall, the question seems to be when (this year), not if.
At press time, XRP traded at $2.19.
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