In brief
- Top analysts are near-certain that numerous crypto spot ETF applications, including Dogecoin, Solana, and XRP, will be approved by year’s end.
- James Seyffart, an ETF analyst at Bloomberg, said the approvals could come next month or by the late fall—but that regardless, the question at hand is now “when not if.”
- Other altcoin ETFs expected to begin trading on Wall Street include Litecoin, Cardano, Polkadot, and Avalanche.
Two top Wall Street analysts are confident many top altcoins ETFs will imminently be approved for trading—so confident, they’ve now estimated the likelihood of such spot approvals coming before the end of the year at almost 100%.
Solana, XRP, and Litecoin spot ETFs are near-locks at 95% odds of approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by the end of 2025, the analysts, Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart of Bloomberg, wrote Friday.
Dogecoin, Cardano, Polkadot, Hedera, and Avalanche spot ETF applications are also sitting quite pretty, according to the analysts, with 90% chance of approval by year end.
If the above altcoin ETF applications receive an SEC green light in the coming months, then the development would mark a substantial milestone in the history of Wall Street. Thus far, the agency has approved only two categories of crypto spot ETFs: Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The success of those funds has spurred additional demand for crypto-focused ETFs and other related investment products. Spot Bitcoin ETFs now manage well over $100 billion in assets, with BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) reaching $70 billion in AUM faster than any fund in history, based on company data.
Crypto’s two top tokens have long been considered to belong to a league of their own in terms of legitimacy, stability, and staying power, and even their approval for mainstream trading was no easy feat.
Among the current batch of contenders for spot ETF trading are tokens that have significantly smaller market values and less established reputations than Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Dogecoin, for instance, is the world’s first meme coin; Avalanche is the native token of a network that boasts less than 2% of the total value locked on Ethereum. DOT, the native token of the Polkadot blockchain, boasts a market capitalization of just $5.2 billion, compared to $293 billion for ETH and $2.06 trillion for BTC, according to data provider CoinGecko.
Should spot ETFs of such altcoins begin trading on Wall Street, that would mean that traditional financial institutions and retail investors would be able to gain direct exposure to the tokens, which have historically been volatile. Issuers of spot ETFs actually buy and store the cryptocurrencies represented by the financial products on behalf of clients.
Ric Edelman, founder of the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals, told Decrypt it was a foregone conclusion that crypto ETFs would explode as soon as President Donald Trump, who campaigned avidly as a pro-crypto candidate, was reelected last fall.
“It is regarded as inevitable that we’ll see many other single-asset and multi-asset ETFs of digital coins and tokens,” Edelman said. “The Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs will prove to have been merely the first.”
“And all that’s just the start,” he continued. “Tokenization is underway and once all assets are tokenized, there will be thousands of ETFs, or their tokenized equivalents, launched. It’ll be the biggest explosion of investment opportunities ever.”
The Bloomberg analysts’ confidence that the SEC may soon approve so many crypto ETFs beyond BTC and ETH stems in part from the agency’s openness to engage with requests to list them in recent months—requesting updated details and public comments on numerous applications.
The applications have been filed by several Wall Street firms, ranging from crypto-centric investment managers like Grayscale to TradFi stalwarts including Fidelity and Franklin Templeton.
“Engagement from the SEC is a very positive sign in our opinion,” Bloomberg’s Seyffart said.
Another factor that has likely increased the odds of imminent spot ETF approvals for the altcoins in question is the fact that, in recent months, the CFTC has approved futures markets for all of them. Futures ETFs track the prices of derivatives contracts for assets, but do not involve the actual buying or selling of the underlying asset.
While the Bloomberg analysts are confident that altcoin spot ETFs will garner approvals before the end of the year, the exact timing remains uncertain. Seyffart said they could come in the next month, or perhaps not until the late fall—but that at this point, the question is a “matter of when not if.”
Brian Rudick, chief strategy office at Upexi, a publicly traded Solana-focused treasury company, told Decrypt that while ETF approvals for certain altcoins with lower trading volume may not necessarily result in immediately higher demand for those tokens, Wall Street debuts could have a dramatic price impact on more popular tokens like Solana.
“While demand for ETFs on long-tail alts may not materialize, ETFs based on top assets like Solana will likely see strong inflows and may act as a large positive catalyst for the price of the underlying token,” Rudick said. “Indeed, the spot ETFs were the main reason the price of Bitcoin more than doubled from when BlackRock applied for a spot Bitcoin ETF in mid-2023 through the exceptional inflows over the first six months after launch.”
Edited by James Rubin
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