Analysts were expecting a lukewarm debut for the first US spot Dogecoin and XRP exchange-traded funds, but traders piled in anyway to send volumes soaring.
Within the first hours of Thursday’s session, the REX-Osprey XRP ETF, with the ticker XRPR, had already surpassed $24 million in trading volume.
“That is way more than I would have thought,” wrote Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas on X. “For context that’s five times more than any of the XRP futures ETFs did on day one and it’s only been 90 minutes.”
The REX-Osprey Dogecoin ETF, with the ticker DOJE, also blew past early expectations. Balchunas had initially set an “over/under” benchmark of $2.5 million for opening-day volume, calling that target “respectable table but nothing too special.” But DOJE crossed $6 million within the first hour.
“My over/under got destroyed. That’s shockingly solid,” he wrote.
The launch of the two funds highlights the swift regulatory changes in the US following the US President Donald Trump’s election victory last year. On the back of his win, he promised to pave the way for more industry-friendly regulations.
The election outcome also saw crypto detractor Gary Gensler resign as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Paul Atkins, a Washington insider and long-time pro-crypto firebrand, replaced Gensler as SEC chair earlier this year and has spent the past couple of months establishing a more industry-friendly approach to regulation.
Not exactly spot
The two outsized ETF debuts are striking given the quirks of the products themselves.
Both DOJE and XRPR are structured as so-called 40-Act ETFs, a regulatory workaround that lets issuers launch without waiting for the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s more rigorous approval process under the 1933 Securities Act.
The trade-off is tighter marketing restrictions and less distribution firepower compared to the blockbuster Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs that won SEC approval last year.
The funds are still required to hold the underlying tokens directly, but their prospectuses allow that exposure to be supplemented with overseas spot ETFs and other instruments if needed.
Even so, Thursday’s launches show that investors have the appetite to engage.
Dogecoin, a parody token born in 2013 and long dismissed as “useless by design,” now commands institutional wrappers carrying a 1.5% annual fee — far higher than the 0.2% to 0.4% charged by leading Bitcoin ETFs.
“Pretty sure this is the first-ever US ETF to hold something that has no utility on purpose,” Balchunas said of the Dogecoin ETF last week.
XRP, meanwhile, is getting its highest-profile US listing yet, after years of regulatory battles with the SEC.
Open the gates
The backdrop is a market bracing for many more crypto funds.
As DL News recently reported, the SEC is preparing “generic listing standards” that could allow dozens of crypto ETFs to launch automatically if they meet baseline criteria.
Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan recently said the change could “blow the market wide open,” signaling that Dogecoin and XRP may be just the start of a wave of unconventional products.
To be sure, far from everyone is thrilled about the new ETFs.
“I think it’s dangerous,” Bryan Armour, director of passive strategies research for North America at Morningstar, told the Financial Times. “It normalises collectibles. Dogecoin seems to be a fad, like beanie babies or baseball cards.”
