T. Rowe Price Files $1.68 Trillion Application for First Active Crypto ETF Featuring BTC, ETH, SOL, and XRP

Wall Street's trillion-dollar embrace of digital assets accelerates as traditional finance giants dive headfirst into cryptocurrency markets.

The Institutional Onslaught

T. Rowe Price just dropped a regulatory bombshell—a $1.68 trillion filing for what could become the first actively managed cryptocurrency exchange-traded fund. The proposed fund would directly hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP, marking a seismic shift from passive crypto products to active management strategies.

Mainstream Adoption Accelerates

This isn't just another crypto fund. The sheer scale of the filing demonstrates how institutional investors are moving beyond cautious experimentation to full-scale deployment. Traditional asset managers now see crypto not as a speculative side bet, but as a core component of modern portfolio construction.

Active Management Meets Digital Assets

Unlike passive Bitcoin ETFs that simply track the underlying asset, this active approach allows portfolio managers to adjust allocations between BTC, ETH, SOL, and XRP based on market conditions. It's the ultimate validation that crypto has matured enough to warrant professional management—though whether active management can outperform in crypto's volatile markets remains Wall Street's favorite new guessing game.

Because nothing says 'mature asset class' like needing professional help to manage your internet money—at a tidy management fee, of course.

(a16z) 2025 crypto Status Report highlights the industry’s transition to maturity. According to the report, the swift adoption by institutional investors globally, clearer regulations, and advanced infrastructure solutions have cemented cryptocurrencies’ place in the financial system. The company emphasized this turning point with the phrase, “the story of 2025 is the maturation of the.”

Institutional Adoption and Stablecoin Surge

a16z’s data reveals that the monthly active users in the Web3 domain range between 40 to 70 million. Although there’s a 10 million increase over the past year, this number still represents only a fraction of globalholders. It is estimated that around 716 million people worldwide own cryptocurrency. The report states that this user base is becoming increasingly professional, with a diversification in Web3 experiences.

According to the report, theecosystem made a historic leap in 2025. Thanks to the enactment of the GENIUS Act in the USA, legal uncertainties were eliminated, increasing trust in assets similar to a digital dollar. Over the past 12 months, the total stablecoin trading volume reached 9 trillion dollars. For comparison, PayPal’s annual transaction volume stands at 1.7 trillion dollars. The report highlights that thehas become a stable demand source for US treasuries.

TradFi and Emergence of New Use Cases

a16z reports that the shift of traditional financial giants towards the cryptocurrency market has also accelerated. Institutions like Fidelity, JPMorgan, Mastercard, and Visa have entered the sector over the past 12 months. With this development, the transaction capacity of Blockchain reached 3,400 transactions per second, a 100-fold increase over the past five years. Increased institutional involvement significantly bolstered market liquidity and confidence.

According to the report, 2025 also became a year where new cryptocurrency use cases took center stage. Perpetual futures, prediction markets, and the tokenization of real-world assets became mainstream. a16z noted that these developments have transformed the cryptocurrency market from just a financial experiment platform into a component of the global infrastructure. Particularly, tokenization and on-chain derivatives emerged as some of the most noteworthy trends of 2025.