SEC Punts on Dogecoin and XRP ETF Approvals

The Securities and Exchange Commission has delayed making decisions on whether to allow the trading of altcoin spot ETFs giving investors exposure to Dogecoin and XRP. 

Wall Street’s biggest regulator said Tuesday that it would wait until mid-June to decide next steps for Bitwise’s proposed Dogecoin ETF and Franklin Templeton’s potential XRP product.

Several others, including Franklin Templeton’s Solana ETF and Grayscale’s HBAR ETF, as well as proposed rule changes involving staking for Franklin and Fidelity’s Ethereum ETFs, were also delayed, along with a decision on in-kind creation and redemption mechanisms for Invesco Galaxy’s Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs.

Asset managers are now trying their luck to get an altcoin ETF listed following the success of the Bitcoin ETFs approved last year. And President Trump’s new crypto-friendly administration has asset managers more hopeful than before. 

Bitwise, Franklin Templeton, Grayscale, 21Shares, CoinShares, and Canary Capital are among the firms that have filed paperwork to get new crypto ETFs—based on assets such as Solana, Litecoin, and Cardano—approved.

The SEC frequently pushes back when making decisions on proposed products like ETFs—or exchange-traded funds—which trade on stock exchanges and allow investors to buy shares tracking a particular security or commodity.

Dogecoin and XRP both run on their own blockchains and are popular with traders: DOGE is the eighth-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, while XRP is the fourth-largest. And both assets are in the top 10 most traded cryptocurrencies over a 24-hour period. 

But despite their popularity, it isn’t clear whether ETFs giving investors exposure to such products will be successful: Investment vehicles built around Ethereum, the second biggest coin, were approved last year and have not experienced the same level of trading action as their Bitcoin counterparts.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect additional ETF delays.