Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan said there’s substantial demand for spot XRP ($2.43) exchange-traded funds.
The comments echo that of analysts at JPMorgan who estimated XRP ETFs could draw in $8 billion over their first year.
Other analysts see those funds lure around $800 million in their first month alone.
“XRP has had a sustained community for an extremely long period of time,” Hougan told CNBC. “It’s an asset that trades significantly on centralised exchanges. People would love to find a way to hold it in a simple, low-cost, easy-to-use ETP ($0.00) structure.”
The hype around XRP ETFs reached a fever pitch after the Securities and Exchange Commission acknowledged a smattering of filings earlier in February.
While the SEC has until mid-October to make a final decision, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas said the acknowledgments signal that the agency is more open to XRP ETFs.
Previous applications have been told to withdraw immediately after filing.
“The SEC is much more receptive to discussions under the new administration than they were in the past. In the previous administration the door would simply be shut,” Hougan said.
‘Dozens of filings’
Bitwise’s filing is one of the first XRP ETF applications to be acknowledged. Other applicants include Grayscale and 21Shares.
XRP ETF applications are not the only game in town. Issuers have also applied to launch spot crypto ETFs for altcoins like Solana, Doge, and Litecoin.
Part of the reason could be that institutional investors whetted their appetite in 2024 with Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, Hougan said.
Those funds have a combined $91 billion in assets under management, according to DefiLlama.
“We’re going to get dozens of filings and dozens of launches throughout this year with every possible flavour of financial exposure you can think of,” Hougan said.
Beyond ETFs tied to single assets, Hougan also predicted that crypto ETP indices could arrive as early as the end of this year.
“The killer app in this space will actually be an index-based ETF,” Hougan said. “A lot of people want to just make a generalised bet on crypto, and I’m hopeful we get that at the end of this year as well, so count me as optimistic.”
Andrew Flanagan is a Markets Correspondent for DL News. Got a tip? Reach out to [email protected]. creator solana token
