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Doge eat doge world: Grayscale files for a doge ETF as the meme coin ETF race heats up

Companies are scrambling to file their applications, hoping for a fast SEC approval process under Trump.

The race to list meme coin ETFs is gaining momentum. Last week, Grayscale filed a so-called 19b-4 form with NYSE Arca to transform its doge trust, listed earlier in the day, into a dogecoin ETF. Doge is the eighth-largest crypto by market cap, according to CoinGecko

Grayscale seems to be on a mission to expand into altcoin products. The company has also filed to convert its XRP trust into an XRP ETF, and days after Trump’s inauguration, the company filed to convert its Solana and litecoin trusts into ETFs.

It was a much longer journey for Grayscale with its bitcoin ETF, but it did take a similar path: its ETF was first a bitcoin trust, which was incorporated in 2013. Grayscale filed to convert it into an ETF in February 2017, according to a spokesperson. In January 2024, the SEC approved that ETF and a slew of similar products.

A Grayscale spokesperson told Sherwood News that the company was excited about the doge trust.

“By introducing the fund as a private fund, Grayscale provides a unique opportunity for accredited investors to gain immediate access to this emerging digital asset while the SEC considers dogecoin ETPs,” the spokesperson said, adding that the aim is to simplify the investment process, “allowing investors to participate in the potential growth of dogecoin without the complexities of purchasing and managing the digital asset directly.”  

Last month, Bitwise filed for a dogecoin ETF trust in Delaware, and the day before, Rex Osprey filed for seven spot crypto ETFs, including a doge ETF, a $TRUMP ETF, a Bonk ETF, and an XRP ETF.

“The launch of the Grayscale doge trust — and the subsequent filing to convert it to an ETF — comes at a time when meme coins are increasingly becoming a mainstream crypto asset,” Patrick Young, head of partnerships at Galxe, said. “President Trump himself launched a memecoin, while doge is now linked to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, so it’s a fitting time to launch a more traditional investment product tracking its price.”

Young also noted that with the crypto-friendly administration now in office, ETF providers are scrambling to file their applications to avoid being left behind when the SEC starts approving these filings and the liquidity starts pouring in.

“Grayscale has also filed for solana, litecoin, and XRP ETFs,” he said, “so it’s clearly looking to establish itself as a leader in crypto ETFs while that spot is still up for grabs.”


Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy is a financial journalist who’s written for Dow Jones, The Financial Times Group, and Business Insider.

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XRP bouncing back faster than its peers after crypto market downturn

XRP is seeing the strongest relief bounce on Friday among its peers following the broad market downturn in crypto.

XRP hit its lowest mark since 2024 on Thursday, but the price of the cryptocurrency has increased roughly 20% in the last 24 hours, outpacing bitcoin and ethereum, which have seen 6.5% and 5.2% gains, respectively. dogecoin has climbed 8% and solana is up 5% in the same period, data from CoinGecko shows.

XRPs “price tends to amplify market movements,” Kaiko research analyst Thomas Probst told Sherwood News. “Markets are experiencing a phase of liquidity contraction with increasing volatility. Therefore, rebounds can be frequent, even if they are rarely sustained over the long term.”

The relief comes amid increased activity on the XRP Ledger. Crypto analytics firm Santiment flagged that, during the dip, XRP Ledger saw a four-month high of “whale transactions” over $100,000 and a six-month high of unique addresses on the network in one eight-hour candle. “These are both major signals of a price reversal for any asset,” the firm said. 

Ripple, the company closely tied to XRP and its largest holder, said in a Thursday blog post that XRP is “at the heart of every institutional use case,” such as stablecoin payments, tokenized collateral, and lending markets. 

In an updated road map for the XRP Ledger, the firm outlined upcoming features that act as a “building block for composable financial ecosystems.” These features include a lending protocol, confidential transfers using zero-knowledge proofs, and a new layer of programmability to escrow primitives. 

Meanwhile, spot XRP ETFs absorbed $5.9 million worth of inflows on Thursday, helping the week remain in the black at nearly $24 million.

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Altcoins from solana to dogecoin sink to levels not seen in years

As bitcoin continues to set new cycle lows, altcoins are revisiting levels not seen in several years. Over the past 24 hours:

  • XRP has dropped nearly 19% to trade at $1.24, its lowest mark since November 2024;

  • Solana is down 7% to trade under $84, returning to a price point last recorded in January 2024;

  • dogecoin has slid 10% to $0.09, a price last seen in September 2024;

  • chainlink is down below $8.40, erasing all gains made since October 2023. 

It’s hitting the crypto ecosystem hard: 305,791 traders have been liquidated in the past 24 hours, with total liquidations standing at $1.46 billion, CoinGlass data shows. The market capitalization of the entire crypto space is now at $2.35 trillion, a drawdown of 7.5% in the last 24 hours and a stunning 46.6% plunge from the all-time high of $4.4 trillion set in October 2025. 

The altcoin market is correlated with bitcoin, with both undergoing a steep decline, according to Devin Ryan, director of financial technology research at investment bank Citizens Capital Markets & Advisory. 

As to what is driving the downswing, Ryan pointed to the October sell-off that triggered the massive initial wave of liquidations as well as a number of macro headwinds, such as ongoing geopolitical conflicts, concerns of another government shutdown, and uncertainty surrounding a new Fed chair.

There’s volatility in the asset class because of market structure issues and concerns around where bitcoin goes from here from a price perspective, Ryan said.

Ryan expects the correlation between bitcoin and the rest of the crypto ecosystem to break down over the next year to two years.

The recent volatility highlights that cryptocurrency’s blockchain technology is still in an early phase, Ryan said. “We are still in the early days of even getting the clarity around regulation and the legislation that’s needed to progress from this world of pilot phase — what might happen on the blockchain to here’s what’s happening on the blockchain and on which blockchains,” Ryan told Sherwood News. 

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