Crypto ETF Gold Rush Accelerates—Even as Litecoin Stumbles Out the Gate

Wall Street’s hunger for crypto exposure just hit overdrive. Fresh ETF filings are piling up despite the SEC’s foot-dragging on Litecoin funds—proof that institutional FOMO trumps regulatory skepticism every time.

Behind the scenes: Asset managers are racing to package everything from Solana to memecoins into shiny SEC-compliant wrappers. Because nothing says ’mature asset class’ like repackaging internet jokes for boomer portfolios.

The kicker? This frenzy comes as LTC’s ’digital silver’ narrative tarnishes under delayed approvals. Maybe Wall Street finally learned—when betting on crypto, always back the house (a.k.a. the ETF issuers collecting those sweet 2% fees).

We might not get a ruling until the agency’s final deadline in October. 

Prior to the Monday delay filing, Bloomberg Intelligence’s James Seyffart held out hope that we could see a different result, writing on X that the “SEC went early & delayed a bunch of filings but not this. If any asset has a chance of early approval it’s Litecoin IMO.”

You might recall that in February, he and colleague Eric Balchunas put the odds of a US spot litecoin ETF launching by the end of 2025 at 90%. 

The thinking went that LTC was one of the few assets the SEC had not previously labeled as a security. Also, like bitcoin, litecoin uses the proof-of-work consensus mechanism. 

Those 90% odds remain intact, Balchunas noted last week.

The Bloomberg pros also give spot Solana products a 90% chance of approval by the year’s end. XRP products are next highest, at 85%. 

CME Group introduced SOL futures contracts in March. The derivatives marketplace is set to unveil XRP futures on May 19. 

There are also products currently holding both BTC and ETH that want to add more assets. Hashdex CIO Samir Kerbage called indexing “the next frontier” in the crypto investing space, telling me in March that his firm wants to ultimately create “the Nasdaq 100 for crypto.”  

With Optimism comes more filings. 

Canary last week applied for a product that would hold SEI — a token with a market cap of roughly $1 billion (ranking 90th on CoinGecko). It would seek to earn more SEI “through the validation of transactions in the SEI Network’s proof-of-stake process,” the April 30 filing notes. 

Then on May 2, VanEck proposed an ETF offering exposure to BNB — the native token of the Binance-created BNB Chain. BNB’s market cap of ~$87 billion is fifth-highest among crypto assets — sitting between XRP (~$123 billion) and SOL (~$74 billion).

Kyle DaCruz, VanEck’s director of digital assets product, previously told me the SEC could wait for legislation — noting that following a framework would be easier than evaluating each crypto asset one by one.

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