Can meme coin ETFs turn dumb bits into real bucks?
“Trump himself just launched his own meme coin. If that’s legal, why shouldn’t a doge ETF be?”
Meme coins want to play with the grown-ups in finance, and to prove it, a whole new slew of meme-coin-based ETFs have been submitted for approval.
The mind-boggling rapid institutionalization and the push for normalizing meme coins comes just a couple weeks after bitcoin ETF’s first birthday.
On January 22, Bitwise filed a for a dogecoin ETF trust in Delaware, and the day before, Rex Osprey filed for seven (!!!) spot crypto ETFs, including a dogecoin ETF, a Trump ETF, a Bonk ETF, an XRP ETF, as well as relatively more traditional ones, like ethereum and solana ETFs.
Bitwise Doge ETF likely coming soon.. and yes I checked and this is def legit (vs some whack job committing forgery for a quick pump a la BlackRock XRP that one time). pic.twitter.com/MxoswD0IFy
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) January 22, 2025
Doge — meme coins’ eldest sibling, at 11 years old — is the seventh-largest crypto, with a $52 billion market cap. It’s up 338% in the past year, and is experiencing a huge boost thanks to its No. 1 fan and DOGE leader Elon Musk.
The newest big meme coins on the scene, $TRUMP and $MELANIA , launched just before the presidential inauguration. The five-day-old Trump meme coin has a $7.5 billion market cap and ranks 29th in market cap of all cryptocurrencies, according to CoinGecko.
Whether Trump 2.0 will usher in the materialization of altcoin and meme coin ETFs remains to be seen, but the trend is gaining momentum.
Two Prime Digital Assets CEO Alexander Blume told Sherwood News that these ETF applications are realistic.
“Our new regulatory regime looks to be much more permissive toward crypto,” he said. “Trump himself just launched his own meme coin. If that’s legal, why shouldn’t a doge ETF be?”
Arman Meguerian, founder and CEO of investment platform Timestamp, had some reservations about the new ETFs containing “the most speculative of crypto assets.”
“I don’t oppose these proposed ETFs for doge, bonk, Trump, and possibly other meme coins. If the market demands such products, then they should be allowed,” Meguerian said. “However, investors should be aware of the risk involved and invest with the appropriate precautions in mind. In the big picture of this industry, the highest-quality asset is bitcoin.”
Last year, VanEck and 21Shares filed applications for solana ETFs, and Cboe followed with an application to list them on its exchange, starting the clock ticking for the SEC to make a decision on them by March.
Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy is a financial journalist who’s written for Dow Jones, The Financial Times Group, and Business Insider.
