The altcoin ETF has exploded, completing in half a year what Bitcoin achieved in ten years.

Author: Clow

Produced by: Plain Language Blockchain

It took nearly ten years for Bitcoin ETF to be approved, while altcoins only took half a year.

In November 2025, something incredible happened on Wall Street. Solana, XRP, Dogecoin—these altcoins, which had been regarded as “speculative toys” by mainstream finance, surprisingly landed on the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ as regulated ETF products within just a few weeks.

Even more magical is that these ETFs were not strictly approved one by one by the SEC, but rather utilized a brand new “universal listing standard” and a little-known “8(a) clause” fast track, which almost automatically came into effect with the “tacit approval” of the regulatory agency.

The rules of the game are being completely rewritten.

01. The regulatory “strategic abandonment”

For a long time, the SEC's attitude towards cryptocurrency ETFs can be summarized in four words: delay if possible.

Each new crypto ETF application requires the exchange to submit a rule change request, and the SEC has a review period of up to 240 days, often rejecting applications right before the deadline on the grounds of “market manipulation risk.” This kind of “enforcement regulation” leaves countless applications to sink without a trace.

But everything suddenly changed on September 17, 2025.

The SEC has approved the proposed revisions to the “Universal Listing Standards” put forward by three major exchanges. This seemingly technical adjustment actually opens a door for altcoin ETFs: cryptocurrency assets that meet specific conditions can be directly listed without individual approval.

The core access criteria are very simple:

• Either the asset has at least 6 months of trading history on a CFTC-regulated futures market, and the exchange has a monitoring agreement with that market;
• Alternatively, there are precedents of ETFs in the market that have at least 40% exposure to the asset.

As long as one of the criteria is met, the counterfeit ETF can go through the “fast track.” Solana, XRP, and Dogecoin happen to meet the standards.

More aggressively, the issuers have also found another “accelerator” - 8(a) clause.

Traditional ETF applications typically include a “delay amendment” clause that allows 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 the registration statement does not contain language delaying its effectiveness, the document will automatically become effective 20 days after submission, unless the SEC actively initiates a stop order.

It's like giving the SEC a multiple-choice question: either find sufficient reasons to stop it within 20 days, or just watch the product go live automatically.

Due to the manpower shortage caused by the government shutdown, coupled with the pressure from judicial rulings such as the Ripple case and the Grayscale case, the SEC is almost powerless to respond to hundreds of backlog applications. More importantly, on January 20, 2025, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler resigned, and the entire regulatory agency entered a “lame duck” state.

Publishers seized this once-in-a-lifetime window of opportunity and raced forward.

02. Solana ETF: A Bold Attempt at Staking Returns

With the technological halo of its high-performance public chain, Solana has become the third “blue-chip” asset to be ETF-ified after BTC and ETH.

As of November 2025, six Solana ETFs have been listed, including Bitwise's BSOL, Grayscale's GSOL, VanEck's VSOL, and others. Among them, Bitwise's BSOL is the most aggressive—it not only provides exposure to the SOL price but also attempts to allocate on-chain earnings 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 “Staking ETF” in the S-1 filing, attempting to design a compliant structure to allocate staking rewards. If successful, this will allow the Solana ETF not only to capture price increases but also to provide cash flow similar to “dividends,” making it much more attractive than a non-yielding Bitcoin ETF.

Another point of contention is that Solana does not have futures contracts on the CME. According to the historical logic of the SEC, this should have been a reason for rejection. However, the regulators ultimately allowed it, which may indicate that they recognize the long trading history of regulated exchanges like Coinbase as sufficient to create effective price discovery.

The market performance is equally impressive.

According to SoSoValue data, the Solana ETF has recorded net inflows for 20 consecutive days since its launch, accumulating $568 million. While Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs faced large-scale net outflows in November, the Solana ETF went against the trend and attracted funds. 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 capitalization.

This indicates that institutional funds are reallocating assets, withdrawing from crowded Bitcoin trades and seeking emerging assets with higher Beta and growth potential.

03. XRP ETF: Valuation Reassessment After Regulatory Settlement

The path to ETF approval for XRP has long been hindered by legal disputes between Ripple Labs and the SEC. After reaching a settlement in August 2025, the sword of Damocles hanging over XRP finally fell, leading to a surge in ETF applications.

As of November, 5 XRP ETFs have been listed or are about to be listed:

• Bitwise's XRP ETF will be listed on November 20, using “XRP” directly as the trading code. This bold marketing strategy has sparked controversy—some believe it is a genius move that allows retail investors to locate it directly during searches; others criticize that it may confuse the underlying asset with the derivative fund.
• Canary's XRPC was first launched on November 13, with a record inflow of $243 million on its first day.
• Grayscale's GXRP will be listed on November 24, converted from a trust, eliminating the premium and discount problem.

Despite strong initial capital inflows, the price of XRP came under short-term pressure after the ETF listing. Within days of the Bitwise ETF launch, the price of XRP fell by about 7.6%, at one point dropping over 18%.

This is a typical “buy the expectation, sell the news” behavior. Speculative funds buy in advance when the expectation of ETF approval forms, and take profits after the news is confirmed. Macroeconomic factors (such as strong employment data leading to weakened expectations for interest rate cuts) also suppress the overall performance of risk assets.

However, in the long run, the ETF has introduced sustained passive buying for XRP. Data shows that the cumulative net inflow of the XRP ETF has exceeded $587 million since its launch. Speculators are retreating, but allocating institutional funds are entering the market, building a higher long-term bottom for XRP prices.

04. Dogecoin ETF: From Meme to Asset Class

The ETFization of Dogecoin marks an important turning point: Wall Street is beginning 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 will be listed on November 24;
• Bitwise's BWOW has submitted the application 8(a), waiting for automatic activation;
• 21Shares' TXXD is a 2x leveraged product aimed at high-risk tolerance investors.

The market response is relatively lukewarm. The trading volume of GDOG on its first day was only $1.41 million, with no net inflow 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. Next wave: Litecoin, HBAR, and BNB

In addition to the three major popular altcoins, Litecoin, Hedera (HBAR), and BNB are also actively seeking ETF approval.

Litecoin, as a code fork of Bitcoin, is closest to BTC in regulatory attributes and is considered 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 the listing of the LTC ETF is imminent.

The application for the HBAR ETF is led by Canary, with Grayscale following up. The key breakthrough is that Coinbase Derivatives launched CFTC-regulated HBAR futures contracts in February 2025, providing the necessary regulatory market foundation for HBAR to meet the “general listing standards.” Nasdaq has submitted a 19b-4 filing for Grayscale, indicating that HBAR is very likely to become the next approved asset.

BNB is the most challenging attempt. VanEck submitted an S-1 application for VBNB, but given the close ties between BNB and the Binance exchange, as well as Binance's previous complex entanglements with U.S. regulators, the BNB ETF is seen as the ultimate test of the SEC's new leadership's regulatory standards.

06, “Cryptographic Multiplier” Effect: The Double-Edged Sword of Liquidity

The launch of the altcoin ETF 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 “Crypto Multiplier”: the market value of crypto assets responds non-linearly to capital inflows. For altcoins with liquidity far lower than Bitcoin, the institutional funds brought by ETFs could create a significant price impact.

According to Kaiko data, the recent 1% market depth for Bitcoin is approximately $535 million, while the market depth for most altcoins is only a fraction of that. This means that an equivalent influx of funds (such as the $105 million on the first day of the Bitwise XRP ETF) should theoretically have a much greater impact on the price of XRP compared to BTC.

The current phenomenon of “selling facts” obscures this effect. Market makers need to buy spot during the initial stage of ETF subscriptions, but if market sentiment is generally bearish, they might use the futures market to short hedge or digest inventory in the over-the-counter market, temporarily suppressing the rise in spot prices.

But as the ETF asset scale accumulates, this passive buying will gradually drain the liquidity of the exchanges, leading to more intense price fluctuations in the future, with a tendency to rise.

07. Market Segmentation: New Valuation System

The launch of ETFs has intensified the liquidity stratification in the cryptocurrency market:

First tier (ETF assets): BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, DOGE. These assets have compliant fiat entry points, and registered investment advisors (RIA) and pension funds can 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 being marginalized.

This differentiation will reshape the valuation logic of the entire cryptocurrency market, shifting from speculation-driven to a multipolar valuation based on compliance channels and institutional allocations.

08, Summary

The wave of altcoin ETFs by the end of 2025 marks a decisive step for crypto assets from “fringe speculation” to “mainstream allocation.”

By cleverly utilizing the “Universal Listing Standards” and the “8(a) clause”, the issuer successfully breached the SEC's defenses, bringing controversial assets such as Solana, XRP, and Dogecoin into regulated exchanges.

This not only provides a compliant funding channel for these assets, but more importantly, it has factually confirmed the “non-security” nature of these assets at the legal level.

Despite facing profit-taking pressure in the short term, as institutional investors begin to allocate 1%-5% positions for these assets in their models, structural inflows of funds 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) trying to replicate this path.

In the diversified cryptocurrency market, ETFs will become the most important watershed distinguishing 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 that was once driven by speculation and narratives is evolving towards a new order anchored by compliant channels and institutional allocations.

This process is now irreversible.