During his appearance at the Consensus conference, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse stated that an XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) was “inevitable” in the US. The Ripple boss has also predicted the appearance of other altcoin ETFs.
In a major policy shift, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission greenlit several spot Ethereum ETFs, pushing the price of the underlying cryptocurrency to the highest level since mid-March.
Following the sudden approval of 19b-4 forms, Ethereum ETFs are yet to start trading. The regulator has now requested that prospective issuers urgently hand in their draft S-1 filings, according to recent reports.
The launch of Bitcoin ETFs, which took place in January, ended up being a massive success. BlackRock’s record-breaking iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has now managed to accumulate a staggering $20 billion in total assets under management.
This is not the first time that Garlinghouse has confidently predicted altcoin ETFs. In February, months before the SEC’s shocking U-turn, he also said that the appearance of such products was “inevitable.”
British multinational bank Standard Chartered appears to be on the same page with Garlinghouse. As reported by U.Today, it recently predicted that XRP and Solana could be the next altcoins to have their own ETFs in the U.S.
Pro-crypto lawmakers have already urged the SEC to approve ETFs for other tokens as well as Ethereum. Industry observers believe that potential ETF issuers might take advantage of the SEC’s current weakness to roll out altcoin ETFs.
That said, it is not clear how much demand such products will attract. Robert Mitchnick, head of digital assets at BlackRock, recently stated that their clients had shown “very little” interest in altcoins.
