First litecoin and hedera ETFs launch along with new solana ETF

A new wave of altcoin ETFs is starting to trade today, with the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF launching on the NYSE under the ticker BSOL and Canary Capital launching both a spot hedera ETF and a litecoin ETF — the first of their kinds — on the Nasdaq.

While the government shutdown has delayed approvals, these funds open the floodgates for the more than 150 altcoin ETFs tracking 35 assets filed with the SEC. In September, the SEC approved a generic listing standards for crypto ETFs, paving the way for speedier listings. Approvals now don’t require 19b-4 filings, eliminating that roadblock. 

A spokesperson for Canary Capital told Sherwood News that despite the shutdown, the funds were able to begin trading today because they had finalized S-1 registration forms, met the SEC’s generic listing standards, and were approved by the Nasdaq to begin trading through a Form 8-A.

Bitwise said that BSOL’s management fee will be 0% for the first three months on the first $1 billion in assets, and the fund will stake 100% of its assets, aiming to maximize solana’s roughly 7% staking reward.

Matt Hougan, Bitwise CIO, told Sherwood that solana is “a legitimate contender in the race to dominate the stablecoin and tokenization market, and a key piece of any serious diversified crypto investor’s portfolio.”

Hougan anticipates high interest, with traditional investors wanting a low-cost, easy way to gain exposure to “the growth of stablecoins and tokenization.”

As for the Canary funds, the HBAR ETF will be listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker HBR.

HBAR, the native token of the hedera network, is up 17% in the past 24 hours and up 326% in the past year. The token is the 26th-largest by market cap.

Canary’s litecoin ETF will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker LTCC. Litecoin, the 30th-largest crypto by market cap, is up 3% in the past 24 hours and up 44% in the past year.

Steven McClurg, founder and CEO of Canary Capital, told Sherwood that bitcoin and ethereum ETFs fundamentally changed the game by bringing access to a massive investor base through the simplicity of an ETF wrapper. Now, the launches of the litecoin and HBAR ETFs are “monumental,” because they will provide a wider range of investors with more choice while opening up new corners of the crypto ecosystem, he said.

McClurg said that litecoin, often called “digital silver,” has one of the longest-running blockchains in existence, boasting 14 years of uninterrupted uptime and adoption across payment networks worldwide.

“It embodies speed, efficiency, and reliability, the foundation of digital currency utility,” he said.

Meanwhile, hedera represents the next generation of enterprise Web3 infrastructure. “This high-speed distributed ledger is already used by Fortune 500 companies to tokenize assets, process settlements, and build decentralized applications,” McClurg said.