This year, exchange-traded funds opened several doors to crypto on Wall Street, as the SEC forged a fresh approach to the products.
Although asset managers had previously fought tooth and nail to offer products tracking Bitcoin and Ethereum’s spot price, many foresaw opportunities in 2025, as the regulatory environment started to shift with President Donald Trump’s return to power in January.
As of Dec. 15, spot Bitcoin ETFs had generated $57.7 billion in net inflows since their historic debut in January 2024, according to Farside Investors. That represented a 59% increase compared to $36.2 billion at the start of this year. But inflows weren’t consistent.
Investors poured $1.2 billion into spot Bitcoin ETFs on Oct. 6, for example, as the asset approached an all-time high above $126,000, according to CoinGlass. As Bitcoin’s price slipped below the $90,000 mark on Nov. 11, a few weeks later, investors yanked $900 million from the funds.
Still, that was only the second worst day for spot Bitcoin ETFs on record: As Bitcoin plunged in February on fears related to trade and inflation, the products posted $1 billion in outflows.
Since their debut last July, spot Ethereum ETFs had generated $12.6 billion in net inflows, as of Dec. 15, according to CoinGlass. As the cryptocurrency surged toward an all-time high of nearly $4,950 in August, the products generated $1 billion in inflows on a single day.
With signs of growing adoption among financial institutions, those products largely operated in the background, as onlookers focused on the prospect of more ETFs that could potentially boost digital asset prices, or expand access to new investors. Yet some are relatively focused on ETFs tracking multiple cryptocurrencies at once, as products ideal for institutions.
Make it generic
When the SEC approved generic listing standards for commodity-based trusts in September, the regulator moved to address anticipation that had been building for months.
The stack of applications for ETFs covering a wide range of digital assets had grown thick on its desk, with approvals hinging on an answer that the SEC’s previous leadership had danced around for years: When should a digital asset be treated a commodity?
Instead of being forced to make case-by-case decisions about the eligibility of various cryptocurrencies, from Dogecoin to the president’s meme coin, the SEC instead outlined criteria for exchanges that made digital assets fit for commodity-based trusts.
Among the most important factors, the standards require digital assets underlying ETFs to trade on surveilled markets, have a six-month history of futures trading, or already back an exchange-traded fund with significant exposure.
That meant that at least a dozen cryptocurrencies were instantly “good to go,” Bloomberg Intelligence Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas told Decrypt in September. From his perspective, he described the move as expected.
The approval of generic listing standards is set to greatly expand the number of products that investors have access to, but asset managers are still waiting for answers on at least 126 ETFs, Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Research Analyst James Seyffart recently said on X.
Those applications focus on tokens from up-and-coming decentralized finance projects like the Hyperliquid, as well as relatively novel meme coins, including Mog.
XRP and Solana
First there was Bitcoin, then there was Ethereum. Now, investors in the U.S. have access to ETFs tracking the spot price of XRP and Solana, among a handful of others.
As the fifth- and seventh-largest digital assets by market capitalization, respectively, XRP and Solana both faced regulatory headwinds under the Biden administration, which dissipated on the road to becoming underlying assets for a number of products.
Last year’s debut of spot Bitcoin ETFs unleashed a wave of demand that buoyed the asset’s price to new highs. While the same can’t be said for the smaller cryptocurrencies yet, products dedicated purely to XRP and Solana still generated notable activity.
“I don’t think they’ve had the effect on the price that maybe people hoped for, but I do think, idiosyncratically, they have been huge successes and a validation of investor appetite beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum,” Bitwise Senior Investment Strategist Juan Leon told Decrypt.
Leon said the debut of ETFs for Solana and XRP came in November at a “disadvantageous time,” with macroeconomic conditions driving digital-asset prices lower in recent months.
Still, spot Solana ETFs have generated $92 million in net inflows since launch, as of Dec. 15, according to CoinGlass. Spot XRP ETFs, which debuted the same month, have generated roughly $883 million in net inflows since they began trading.
The debut of Solana ETFs was notable for another reason: They were among the first ETFs to share a portion of their rewards from staking with investors, a development bolstered by new guidance last month from the U.S. Treasury Department and IRS.
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, was among financial giants that have thus far passed up the opportunity to expand their set of crypto-focused products to additional assets, but Leon noted that XRP and Solana’s communities may not need them.
“What we’ve seen with the ETF so far shows that these communities are much more engaged and stronger and larger than maybe many people thought,” he said. “And I think that bodes well for both ecosystems going into 2026.”
Net inflows for spot Dogecoin ETFs stood at $2 million as of Dec. 15, according to SoSoValue.
Index wars?
In 2025, individual investors and hedge funds were among the most likely groups to hold spot crypto ETFs, but that dynamic may start shifting materially soon, according to Gerry O’Shea, head of global market insights at Hashdex Asset Management.
He told Decrypt that many advisors and professional investors are still in the process of due diligence for ETFs that track cryptocurrencies, but he has a sense that they could start thinking seriously about allocations to the asset class soon.
Then again, Vanguard signaled earlier this month that it would let its 50 million customers trade some spot crypto ETFs on its brokerage platform. Bank of America, meanwhile, put its stamp of approval on modest crypto allocations for private wealth clients starting next year.
“A year ago or so, there was a lot of regulatory uncertainty, and they weren’t really ready to dip their toes into the space” he said. “And now the questions aren’t really whether or not they should get exposure. It’s how they should get exposure.”
In that sense, O’Shea believes ETFs that track an index of digital assets will become a bigger part of the conversation next year. Many professional investors appreciate how those funds’ holdings shift over time, giving them relative peace of mind, he said.
“They can make an allocation to an index ETF and get broad exposure to the growth potential of the market without having to have all that sort of detailed knowledge,” O’Shea explained. “They don’t need to know everything about every one of these individual assets.”
In February, Hashdex was behind the first spot ETF tracking multiple digital assets in the U.S., with the debut of the Hashdex Nasdaq Crypto Index ETF. Modeled on the Nasdaq Crypto Index, it holds Cardano, Chainlink, and Stellar, as well as larger cryptocurrencies.
Franklin Templeton, Grayscale, Bitwise, 21Shares, and CoinShares have debuted similar products, although some seek exposure to digital assets through derivatives. In total, the group of index ETFs offer exposure to 19 digital assets, per ETF Trends.
Although some pension funds in the U.S. have purchased spot Bitcoin ETFs, the State of Wisconsin Investment Board liquidated $300 million in holdings around February. The move was revealed via 13F filings that large institutional investors release quarterly.
Al Warda Investments disclosed a $500 million position in BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF in November. The investment firm is tied to the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, a subsidiary of Mubadala Investment, which acts as a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi.
Mubadala itself disclosed a position in BlackRock’s product in February, which was worth $567 million, as of its latest 13F filing. Around the same time, it was revealed that Harvard’s endowment held shares in the ETF worth $433 million.
Brown University and Emory University also disclosed positions in spot Bitcoin ETFs this year, emerging as early adopters of the asset on an institutional level. Broadly, analysts have said the shift in investors could lead to less volatility for Bitcoin and shallower drawdowns.
“It hasn’t been dramatic, but it has been notable,” O’Shea said, in reference to a broadening investment base. “This shift from retail to institutional is very good for the long-term sustainability of the asset class, because you do have these folks with much longer-term time horizons.”
