Under the new standards, a batch of altcoin ETFs go live: covering in half a year what bitcoin achieved in ten years

Original Title: "Altcoin ETFs Explode, Covering Bitcoin's Decade-Long Path in Half a Year: The Crypto Market Is Undergoing a Structural Revolution"
Original Author: Clow, Plain Language Blockchain

Bitcoin ETFs took nearly a decade to get approved, while altcoins only took half a year.

In November 2025, something incredible happened on Wall Street. Solana, XRP, Dogecoin—altcoins once dismissed by mainstream finance as "speculative toys"—collectively landed on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq within just a few weeks, transforming into regulated ETF products.

Even more astonishing, these ETFs were not individually and rigorously approved by the SEC, but instead utilized a brand-new "universal listing standard" and a little-known "8(a) clause" fast track, effectively coming into effect automatically with regulatory acquiescence.

The rules of the game are being completely rewritten.

Regulatory "Strategic Abandonment"

For a long time, the SEC's attitude toward crypto ETFs could be summed up in four words: delay whenever possible.

Every new crypto ETF application required exchanges to submit rule change proposals, with the SEC enjoying up to 240 days of review, often rejecting applications at the last minute citing "market manipulation risks." This "regulation by enforcement" approach led countless applications to disappear into a black hole.

But on September 17, 2025, everything suddenly changed.

The SEC approved proposals from three major exchanges to revise the "universal listing standard." This seemingly technical adjustment actually opened the door for altcoin ETFs: crypto assets meeting specific criteria could be listed directly without individual approval.

The core admission criteria are simple:

· Either the asset must have at least six months of trading history on a CFTC-regulated futures market, with the exchange having a surveillance agreement with that market;

· Or there must already be an ETF in the market with at least 40% exposure to that asset.

As long as one of these is met, altcoin ETFs can take the "fast track." Solana, XRP, and Dogecoin all happen to meet these standards.

Even more aggressively, issuers found another "accelerator"—the 8(a) clause.

Traditional ETF applications usually include a "delayed effectiveness" clause, allowing the SEC to review indefinitely. But in Q4 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 lacks language for delayed effectiveness, the document automatically becomes effective 20 days after submission unless the SEC actively issues a stop order.

This is like giving the SEC a multiple-choice question: either find sufficient grounds to halt the product within 20 days, or watch it go live automatically.

Due to government shutdowns causing staff shortages, combined with judicial pressures from cases like Ripple and Grayscale, the SEC was almost powerless to handle hundreds of backlogged applications. More importantly, on January 20, 2025, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler resigned, leaving the entire regulatory body in a "lame duck" state.

Issuers seized this once-in-a-lifetime window and sprinted forward.

Solana ETF: A Bold Attempt at Staking Yields

With its high-performance public chain technology aura, Solana became the third "blue chip" asset to be ETF-ized after BTC and ETH.

As of November 2025, six Solana ETFs have been listed, including Bitwise's BSOL, Grayscale's GSOL, and VanEck's VSOL. Among them, Bitwise's BSOL is the most aggressive—it not only provides SOL price exposure but also attempts to distribute on-chain staking yields to investors through a staking mechanism.

This is a bold attempt. The SEC has long regarded staking services as securities issuance, but Bitwise explicitly labeled "Staking ETF" in its S-1 filing, trying to design a compliant structure for distributing staking yields. If successful, this would allow Solana ETFs to capture not only price appreciation but also provide dividend-like cash flows, making them far more attractive than yield-less Bitcoin ETFs.

Another point of contention is that Solana does not have a futures contract on CME. According to the SEC's historical logic, this should have been grounds for rejection. But regulators ultimately gave the green light, possibly recognizing that long-term trading history on regulated exchanges like Coinbase is sufficient for effective price discovery.

Market performance has also been impressive.

According to SoSoValue data, Solana ETFs have recorded net inflows for 20 consecutive days since launch, with cumulative inflows of $568 million. While Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs faced large net outflows in November, Solana ETFs bucked the trend and attracted capital. By the end of November, the total assets under management of the six Solana funds had reached $843 million, about 1.09% of SOL's market cap.

This indicates that institutional capital is rotating assets, withdrawing from crowded Bitcoin trades and seeking emerging assets with higher beta and growth potential.

XRP ETF: Value Reassessment After Regulatory Settlement

XRP's path to ETF-ization was long blocked by legal disputes between Ripple Labs and the SEC. After the two parties reached a settlement in August 2025, the sword of Damocles hanging over XRP finally fell, and ETF applications surged.

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

Bitwise's XRP ETF was listed on November 20, using "XRP" directly as its trading code. This bold marketing strategy sparked controversy—some saw it as genius for making it easy for retail investors to find, while others criticized it for blurring the line between the underlying asset and the derivative fund.

Canary's XRPC was the first to go live on November 13, with a record first-day inflow of $243 million.

Grayscale's GXRP was listed on November 24, converted from a trust and eliminating premium/discount issues.

Despite strong initial inflows, XRP's price came under short-term pressure after the ETF listings. In the days following Bitwise ETF's launch, XRP's price fell about 7.6%, at one point dropping over 18%.

This is a classic "buy the rumor, sell the news" behavior. Speculative capital bought in advance as ETF approval expectations formed, then took profits after the news materialized. Macro factors (such as strong employment data weakening rate-cut expectations) also weighed on overall risk assets.

But in the long run, ETFs bring sustained passive buying to XRP. Data shows that since launch, XRP ETFs have seen cumulative net inflows exceeding $587 million. Speculators are retreating, but allocation-focused institutional capital is entering, building a higher long-term floor for XRP's price.

Dogecoin ETF: From Meme to Asset Class

The ETF-ization of Dogecoin marks a major 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 was listed on November 24;

Bitwise's BWOW has submitted an 8(a) application and is awaiting automatic effectiveness;

21Shares' TXXD is a 2x leveraged product targeting high-risk investors.

Market response has been relatively lukewarm. GDOG's first-day trading volume was only $1.41 million, with no net inflow. This may be due to Dogecoin's highly retail investor base—they prefer to hold tokens directly on exchanges rather than pay 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.

The Next Wave: Litecoin, HBAR, and BNB

Beyond the three major altcoins, Litecoin, Hedera (HBAR), and BNB are also actively seeking ETF-ization.

Litecoin, as a Bitcoin code fork, is closest to BTC in regulatory attributes and is considered a commodity. Canary Capital submitted an application in October 2024 and filed an 8-A form (the final step for exchange registration) on October 27, 2025, indicating that an LTC ETF listing is imminent.

HBAR ETF applications are led by Canary, with Grayscale following. The key breakthrough was Coinbase Derivatives launching a CFTC-regulated HBAR futures contract in February 2025, providing the necessary regulated market foundation for HBAR to meet the "universal listing standard." Nasdaq has already filed a 19b-4 for Grayscale, suggesting HBAR is very likely to be the next approved asset.

BNB is the most challenging attempt. VanEck has filed an S-1 for VBNB, but given BNB's close ties to the Binance exchange and Binance's previous regulatory entanglements in the US, the BNB ETF is seen as the ultimate test of the SEC's new leadership's regulatory stance.

"Crypto Multiplier" Effect: The Double-Edged Sword of Liquidity

The launch of altcoin ETFs is not just about adding investment codes—it is structurally changing the entire market through capital flows.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has proposed the "crypto multiplier" concept: the market cap response of crypto assets to capital inflows is nonlinear. For altcoins with much lower liquidity than Bitcoin, institutional capital brought by ETFs can have a huge price impact.

According to Kaiko data, Bitcoin's recent 1% market depth is about $535 million, while most altcoins' market depth is only a fraction of that. This means that the same scale of inflows (such as Bitwise XRP ETF's first-day $105 million) should theoretically have a much greater impact on XRP's price than on BTC.

The current "sell the news" phenomenon masks this effect. Market makers need to buy spot in the early stages of ETF subscriptions, but if overall market sentiment is bearish, they may hedge by shorting futures or offload inventory in OTC markets, suppressing spot price rises in the short term.

But as ETF assets accumulate, this passive buying will gradually drain exchange liquidity, leading to more intense and upward price volatility in the future.

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 onramps, and registered investment advisors (RIAs) and pension funds can allocate to them without barriers. They will enjoy a "compliance premium" and lower liquidity risk.

Second tier (non-ETF assets): Other Layer 1 and DeFi tokens. Lacking ETF channels, these assets will continue to rely on retail capital and on-chain liquidity. Their correlation with mainstream assets may decrease, facing the risk of marginalization.

This divergence will reshape the entire crypto market's valuation logic, shifting from speculation-driven to a multipolar valuation based on compliance channels and institutional allocation.

Summary

The late-2025 altcoin ETF wave marks a decisive step for crypto assets from "fringe speculation" to "mainstream allocation."

By cleverly leveraging the "universal listing standard" and "8(a) clause," issuers have successfully breached the SEC's defenses, bringing previously controversial assets like Solana, XRP, and Dogecoin onto regulated trading platforms.

This not only provides these assets with compliant capital inflows, but more importantly, it effectively affirms their "non-security" status in legal terms.

Despite short-term profit-taking pressure, as institutional investors begin allocating 1%-5% to 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 multipolar crypto market, ETFs will become the most important dividing line between "core assets" and "peripheral 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 narrative is evolving toward a new order anchored by compliance channels and institutional allocation.

This process is now irreversible.

 

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