Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson (Patricia De Melo Moreira/Getty Images)

Grayscale piles on altcoin ETFs with cardano filing

Grayscale is on a crypto ETF roll.

2/11/25 2:41PM

Cardano is back in the crypto conversation as digital asset heavyweight Grayscale filed for a cardano ETF with the SEC yesterday. Last week, it filed a 19-b4 form with NYSE Arca to transform its doge trust into a doge ETF.

Cardano is the ninth-largest crypto by market cap, at $28 billion, according to CoinGecko. On Tuesday morning, hours after the Grayscale filing, the token was up 12.3%.

A Grayscale spokesperson, commenting on the cardano filing, said the firm was “appreciative of the opportunity to innovate while engaging constructively with regulators as they review crypto ETPs.”

“We remain optimistic about the potential of bringing digital assets further into the US regulatory perimeter in the ETP wrapper on behalf of Grayscale’s clients,” the spokesperson added.

This cardano ETF filing is the “first one in US and ballpark 60th crypto ETF filed this year so far,” Eric Balchunas, Bloomberg Intelligence senior ETF analyst, said in an X post.

The pace of altcoin and meme coin ETF filings is dizzying, especially considering that the SEC approved bitcoin spot ETFs just over a year ago. Firms, including Bitwise and Rex Osprey, are rushing to file such ETFs — whether they’re $TRUMP, doge, bonk, or XRP ETFs — taking advantage of the pro-crypto administration and wanting to get in early.

Approvals for these also seem to be fairly imminent. Balchunas recently posted his “altcoin ETF approval odds” on X.

“Litecoin leads w 90% chance, then Doge, followed by Solana and XRP,” he added.

NEW: @EricBalchunas and I took a look at the filings for spot crypto ETFs. We're putting out relatively high odds of approval across the board. Mainly focused on Litecoin, Solana, XRP, and Dogecoin for now.

Here's the table with the odds and some other details: pic.twitter.com/xaXaNXLb0M
— James Seyffart (@JSeyff) February 10, 2025

Grayscale also filed to convert its XRP trust into an XRP ETF, as well as its solana and litecoin trusts into ETFs.

Todd Ruoff, CEO of Autonomys, noted that ADA hasn’t really been “in the mainstream for some time,” adding that Grayscale’s application faces headwinds. “At least in the short term, with the lack of a regulated CME futures market and the SEC having previously labeled cardano as a security,” he said.

He added, however, that the move exemplifies the industry’s “relentless drive to pave the way for broader crypto-ETF adoption and integration into mainstream finance.”

Other experts also noted that ADA boasts an essential differentiator from, say, solana, namely regarding distribution and centralization.

Solana, “while advancing in speed, has faced criticism for centralization but is actively working towards broader decentralization,” Alan Orwick, cofounder of Quai Network, said. “Cardano boasts a more community-driven approach with over 3,000 validator nodes.”

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

Sage D. Young18h

Ethereum rises amid market rally, but traders remain unconvinced price can break $2,500

Ethereum jumped 6.4% to trade at the $2,170 level on Monday morning, resulting in $208 million worth of liquidations in the last 24 hours with over 60% coming from short positions.

That said, traders are not convinced the token has enough fuel to climb above $2,500. Prediction market-implied odds of ethereum trading above $2,500 in March have increased from 6% to 23% this morning, but the probability was 70% seven days ago.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Rather, the bearish mood remains, with traders pricing in an implied 67% probability the price of ethereum slips as low as $1,750 this year.

The price action comes as ethereum ETFs registered their first weekly outflow in March, as $59.9 million exited the investment funds last week, per SoSoValue.

Elsewhere, the largest ethereum treasury firm, BitMine Immersion Technologies, announced acquiring 65,341 tokens last week worth around $141.8 million at current prices, bringing the value of its total ethereum holdings to $10.1 billion. The firm also stated it is the largest staking entity in the world, with over 67% of its ethereum stockpile contributing to the network’s security, according to a company press release.

“As many have noticed, crypto and particularly ETH have outperformed the broader market since the Iran war commenced, with ETH rising 18% and outperforming equities,” BitMine Chairman Tom Lee said in a statement. Lee added, “This is a marked contrast to Gold (a traditional store of value), which has fallen more than 15%. Crypto is demonstrating itself to be a good ‘war time’ store of value.”

BitMine’s unrealized loss on its ethereum purchases currently stands at nearly $7 billion, per DropsTab data.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

19h

Bitcoin jumps following Trump saying he will postpone strikes on Iran

After dipping to a two-week low, bitcoin rallied to break $71,000 Monday as traders turned optimistic over the conflict in the Middle East.

Sage D. Young3/20/26

Altcoin trading activity has lost its mojo

Non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies have seen their trading volume plummet in the past five months. The combined trading volume of ethereum, XRP, solana, dogecoin, SUI, and chainlink has decreased by 60% since crypto’s October 10 liquidation event, according to Thomas Probst, a research analyst at crypto markets data provider Kaiko.

Main Altcoins Trading Volume in USD — The trading volume of ETH, SOL, XRP, DOGE, SUI, and LINK.

For all altcoins, spot trading volume on Binance has declined between 80% and 85% to $7.7 billion, while altcoin volume on other exchanges has dropped to $18.8 billion, down from a range of $63 billion to $91 billion in October, a Friday report from Decrypt found, citing data from CryptoQuant.

“This trend may be explained by a contraction in market liquidity over the same period,” Probst told Sherwood News. “This phenomenon is also reflected in the average 1% market depth, which stood at approximately $2.6 million before the October 10 crash and is now closer to $1.7 million when aggregated across ETH, XRP, SOL, SUI, and LINK.”

Market depth is used by investors and traders to gauge the scale of liquidity in a market. 1% market depth refers to the amount of liquidity needed to move the market by 1%.

CoinGlass’s Altcoin Season Index, a measure to assess the performance of non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies, has been sitting above 50 this week, suggesting that the current market is neither in a bitcoin dominant phase nor an altcoin season.