Written by: Clow
It took nearly a decade for Bitcoin ETFs to be approved, while altcoins only took half a year.
In November 2025, something incredible happened on Wall Street. Solana, XRP, Dogecoin—these altcoins, once regarded by mainstream finance as "speculative toys," collectively landed on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq in just a few weeks, transforming into regulated ETF products.
Even more magical, these ETFs were not individually approved by the SEC through strict scrutiny, but rather utilized a brand new "Universal Listing Standard" and a little-known "8(a) clause" fast track, coming into effect almost with the tacit approval of regulatory agencies.
The rules of the game are being completely rewritten.
01 Strategic Abandonment of Regulation
For a long time, the SEC's attitude towards cryptocurrency ETFs can be summarized in four words: delay as much as possible.
Each new crypto ETF application requires exchanges to submit rule change requests, and the SEC has a review period of up to 240 days, often rejecting applications at the last minute on the grounds of "market manipulation risk." This "enforcement regulation" has left countless applications in limbo.
But on September 17, 2025, everything suddenly changed.
The SEC approved the "Universal Listing Standard" amendment proposals put forth by three major exchanges. This seemingly technical adjustment actually opened a door for altcoin ETFs: crypto assets that meet specific conditions can be listed directly without individual approval.
The core entry conditions are simple:
Either the asset has at least six months of trading history in a CFTC-regulated futures market, and the exchange has a monitoring agreement with that market;
Or there are existing ETFs with at least 40% exposure to that asset.
As long as one of these conditions is met, altcoin ETFs can take the "fast track." Solana, XRP, and Dogecoin all happen to meet the standards.
Even more aggressively, issuers found another "accelerator"—the 8(a) clause.
Traditional ETF applications typically include a "delay amendment" clause, allowing the SEC to review indefinitely. However, in the fourth quarter of 2025, issuers like Bitwise and Franklin Templeton began removing this clause from their applications.
According to Section 8(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, if a registration statement does not contain language delaying its effectiveness, the document will automatically take effect 20 days after submission, unless the SEC actively initiates a stop order.
This presents the SEC with a multiple-choice question: either find sufficient reasons to halt it within 20 days, or watch the product go live automatically.
Due to staff shortages caused by government shutdowns, along with pressures from judicial rulings like the Ripple and Grayscale cases, the SEC was almost powerless to handle hundreds of backlog applications. More importantly, on January 20, 2025, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler resigned, leaving the entire regulatory agency in a "lame duck" state.
Issuers seized this once-in-a-lifetime window and sprinted forward.
02 Solana ETF: A Bold Attempt at Staking Yields
With the technological halo of a high-performance public chain, Solana became the third "blue-chip" asset to be ETF-ified after BTC and ETH.
As of November 2025, six Solana ETFs have been launched, including Bitwise's BSOL, Grayscale's GSOL, and VanEck's VSOL. Among them, Bitwise's BSOL is the most aggressive—it not only provides exposure to SOL prices but also attempts to allocate on-chain yields to investors through a staking mechanism.
This is a bold attempt. The SEC has long viewed staking services as securities issuance, but Bitwise clearly labeled it as a "Staking ETF" in the S-1 filing, trying to design a compliant structure to distribute staking yields. If successful, this would allow the Solana ETF to capture price increases while also providing cash flow similar to "dividends," making it far more attractive than the yield-less Bitcoin ETF.
Another point of contention is that Solana does not have futures contracts on the CME. According to the SEC's historical logic, this should have been a reason for rejection. However, the regulatory body ultimately allowed it, possibly indicating that they recognized the long trading history of regulated exchanges like Coinbase as sufficient for effective price discovery.
Market performance has also been impressive.
According to SoSoValue data, the Solana ETF recorded net inflows for 20 consecutive days since its launch, accumulating $568 million. While Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs faced massive net outflows in November, the Solana ETF attracted capital against the trend. By the end of November, the total assets under management of the six Solana funds had reached $843 million, accounting for approximately 1.09% of SOL's market value.
This indicates that institutional funds are rotating assets, withdrawing from crowded Bitcoin trades in search of emerging assets with higher beta and growth potential.
03 XRP ETF: Value Reassessment After Regulatory Settlement
The path to XRP's ETF has long been obstructed by legal disputes between Ripple Labs and the SEC. After both parties reached a settlement in August 2025, the sword of Damocles hanging over XRP finally fell, leading to a surge in ETF applications.
As of November, five XRP ETFs have been launched or are set to launch:
Bitwise's XRP ETF launched on November 20, directly using "XRP" as the trading code. This bold marketing strategy sparked controversy—some believe it is a genius move that allows retail investors to directly locate it during searches; others criticize it for confusing the underlying asset with the derivative fund.
Canary's XRPC launched first on November 13, recording a record inflow of $243 million on its first day.
Grayscale's GXRP launched on November 24, converted from a trust, eliminating the premium/discount issue.
Despite strong initial inflows, XRP's price came under short-term pressure after the ETF launch. Within days of the Bitwise ETF's launch, XRP's price fell by about 7.6%, at one point dropping over 18%.
This is a classic case of "buy the expectation, sell the fact." Speculative funds bought in advance when the expectation of ETF approval formed, and after the news landed, they took profits. Macroeconomic factors (such as strong employment data leading to reduced rate cut expectations) also suppressed the overall performance of risk assets.
However, in the long run, the ETF has introduced sustained passive buying pressure for XRP. Data shows that since its launch, the XRP ETF has accumulated net inflows of over $587 million. Speculators are retreating, but allocation-focused institutional funds are entering, building a higher long-term bottom for XRP's price.
04 Dogecoin ETF: From Meme to Asset Class
The ETF-ification of Dogecoin marks an important turning point: Wall Street has begun to accept "Meme coins," based on community consensus and network effects, as legitimate investment targets.
Currently, there are three Dogecoin-related products:
Grayscale's GDOG launched on November 24;
Bitwise's BWOW has submitted an 8(a) application, awaiting automatic effectiveness;
21Shares' TXXD is a 2x leveraged product aimed at high-risk investors.
Market reaction has been relatively tepid. GDOG's first-day trading volume was only $1.41 million, with no net inflows recorded. This may stem from the highly retail-oriented nature of the Dogecoin investor community—they tend to prefer holding tokens directly on exchanges rather than paying management fees through ETFs.
However, the market generally expects Bitwise's BWOW to activate institutional demand in this sector with lower fees and stronger marketing capabilities.
05 The Next Wave: Litecoin, HBAR, and BNB
Beyond the three popular altcoins, Litecoin, Hedera (HBAR), and BNB are also actively seeking ETF-ification.
Litecoin, as a code fork of Bitcoin, is considered the closest in regulatory attributes to BTC and is viewed as a commodity. Canary Capital submitted an application in October 2024 and filed the 8-A form (the final step for exchange registration) on October 27, 2025, indicating that an LTC ETF launch is imminent.
The HBAR ETF application is led by Canary, with Grayscale following suit. A key breakthrough occurred when Coinbase Derivatives launched CFTC-regulated HBAR futures contracts in February 2025, providing the necessary regulatory market foundation for HBAR to meet the "Universal Listing Standard." Nasdaq has submitted a 19b-4 filing for Grayscale, indicating that HBAR is very likely to become the next approved asset.
BNB represents the most challenging attempt. VanEck submitted an S-1 application for VBNB, but given BNB's close ties to the Binance exchange and the complex entanglements between Binance and U.S. regulators, the BNB ETF is seen as the ultimate test of the new SEC leadership's regulatory stance.
06 The "Crypto Multiplier" Effect: A Double-Edged Sword of Liquidity
The launch of altcoin ETFs not only increases investment codes but also changes the entire market through structural capital flows.
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) research introduced the concept of the "Crypto Multiplier": the market capitalization of crypto assets responds non-linearly to capital inflows. For altcoins with liquidity far below Bitcoin, the institutional funds brought in by ETFs could create significant price shocks.
According to Kaiko data, Bitcoin's 1% market depth is approximately $535 million, while most altcoins' market depth is only a fraction of that. This means that an equivalent scale of capital inflow (such as the $105 million on the first day of the Bitwise XRP ETF) should theoretically have a much larger impact on XRP's price than on BTC.
The current "sell the fact" phenomenon obscures this effect. Market makers need to buy spot during the initial ETF subscription phase, but if overall market sentiment is bearish, they may use the futures market to short hedge or digest inventory in the over-the-counter market, suppressing spot price increases in the short term.
However, as ETF asset scales accumulate, this passive buying pressure will gradually drain liquidity from exchanges, leading to more pronounced and upward price volatility in the future.
07 Market Stratification: A New Valuation System
The launch of ETFs has intensified liquidity stratification in the crypto market:
First tier (ETF assets): BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, DOGE. These assets have compliant fiat entry points, allowing registered investment advisors (RIAs) and pension funds to allocate without barriers. They will enjoy a "compliance premium" and lower liquidity risk.
Second tier (non-ETF assets): Other Layer 1 and DeFi tokens. Due to the lack of ETF channels, these assets will continue to rely on retail funds and on-chain liquidity, and their correlation with mainstream assets may decrease, facing the risk of marginalization.
This differentiation will reshape the entire crypto market's valuation logic, shifting from speculation-driven to a multi-polar valuation based on compliance channels and institutional allocations.
08 Conclusion
The altcoin ETF wave at the end of 2025 marks a decisive step for crypto assets from "marginal speculation" to "mainstream allocation."
By cleverly utilizing the "Universal Listing Standard" and the "8(a) clause," issuers successfully breached the SEC's defenses, bringing controversial assets like Solana, XRP, and Dogecoin into regulated exchanges.
This not only provides these assets with compliant capital entry points but, more importantly, confirms their "non-security" attributes in a legal sense.
Despite facing profit-taking pressures in the short term, as institutional investors begin to allocate 1%-5% positions for these assets in their models, structural capital inflows will inevitably drive up the valuations of these "digital commodities."
In the next 6-12 months, we will see more assets (such as Avalanche and Chainlink) attempt to replicate this path.
In a multi-polar crypto market, ETFs will become the most important dividing line between "core assets" and "marginal assets."
For investors, this transformation brings not only investment opportunities but also a complete restructuring of the market landscape: a market once driven by speculation and narratives is evolving towards a new order anchored in compliance channels and institutional allocations.
This process is already irreversible.
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