SEC Greenlights ProShares’ Leveraged & Inverse XRP Futures ETFs—Trading Begins April 30
Wall Street’s casino doors swing wider: The SEC just rubber-stamped ProShares’ leveraged and short XRP futures ETFs, set to go live April 30. Get ready for 2x the volatility—or 2x the pain—depending which side of the trade you’re on.
These aren’t your grandma’s crypto funds. The ’2X Long XRP Futures ETF’ and ’1X Short XRP Futures ETF’ let traders amplify bets on Ripple’s embattled token without touching a single actual XRP. Perfect for institutions who love crypto exposure but hate custody risks.
Cynics’ corner: Nothing says ’mature asset class’ like letting hedge funds turbocharge bets on a token still fighting a three-year SEC lawsuit. Happy liquidations!
Source: SEC.gov
These three ProShares funds will become the second, third, and fourth XRP-tracking ETFs available in the U.S. market. However, ProShares is still waiting on SEC approval for its spot XRP ETF application, which is stuck alongside other similar proposals from Grayscale, 21Shares, and Bitwise, according to The Block’s ETF Tracker.
Earlier this month, Teucrium Investment Advisors LLC, a firm based in Vermont, beat everyone to it by launching the first XRP futures ETF in the United States. Teucrium’s ETF offers Leveraged exposure to XRP without actually holding the token.
Eric Balchunas, a senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, posted on X that, “Very odd (maybe a first) that a new asset’s first ETF is leveraged. Spot XRP still not approved, [although] our odds are pretty high.”
CME Group to add XRP futures as ProShares launches ETFs
Shortly after the ProShares news, CME Group, the largest derivatives exchange in the United States, announced plans to add XRP futures to its offerings. CME already lists futures contracts for BTC, ETH, and SOL, and XRP will now join that lineup if everything goes as planned. This move happens under an environment where, under President Donald Trump’s leadership, regulators like the CFTC and the SEC have taken a much less aggressive stance toward the crypto industry.
CME said it would introduce two types of XRP futures contracts: a micro-sized contract tied to 2,500 XRP, and a larger one tied to 50,000 XRP. Both will be settled in cash and calculated using the CME CF XRP-Dollar Reference Rate, which is updated once a day at 4:00 p.m. ET.
Current market data shows XRP trading around $2, up about 1% over the last 24 hours, based on numbers from CoinGecko. If CME’s addition goes through, XRP would become the fourth cryptocurrency available for futures trading on the platform, joining BTC, ETH, and SOL.
The decision to include XRP isn’t random. The fourth-largest crypto now has a market cap of over $127 billion, making it the fourth-largest token on the market.
Its backer, Ripple, has a heavy lobbying presence in Washington, D.C., constantly pushing for regulatory frameworks that favor blockchain development.
Ripple’s aggressive push for XRP adoption, however, hasn’t always sat well with the wider crypto community. The so-called XRP Army has sometimes launched antagonistic campaigns against other blockchain projects to further its own cause.
Ripple has also slammed Bitcoin’s energy-heavy proof-of-work system, pitching XRP as a cleaner, more sustainable option instead.
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