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Doge eat doge world: Grayscale files for a doge ETF as the meme coin ETF race heats up

Companies are scrambling to file their applications, hoping for a fast SEC approval process under Trump.

The race to list meme coin ETFs is gaining momentum. Last week, Grayscale filed a so-called 19b-4 form with NYSE Arca to transform its doge trust, listed earlier in the day, into a dogecoin ETF. Doge is the eighth-largest crypto by market cap, according to CoinGecko

Grayscale seems to be on a mission to expand into altcoin products. The company has also filed to convert its XRP trust into an XRP ETF, and days after Trump’s inauguration, the company filed to convert its solana and litecoin trusts into ETFs.

It was a much longer journey for Grayscale with its bitcoin ETF, but it did take a similar path: its ETF was first a bitcoin trust, which was incorporated in 2013. Grayscale filed to convert it into an ETF in February 2017, according to a spokesperson. In January 2024, the SEC approved that ETF and a slew of similar products.

A Grayscale spokesperson told Sherwood News that the company was excited about the doge trust.

“By introducing the fund as a private fund, Grayscale provides a unique opportunity for accredited investors to gain immediate access to this emerging digital asset while the SEC considers dogecoin ETPs,” the spokesperson said, adding that the aim is to simplify the investment process, “allowing investors to participate in the potential growth of dogecoin without the complexities of purchasing and managing the digital asset directly.”  

Last month, Bitwise filed for a dogecoin ETF trust in Delaware, and the day before, Rex Osprey filed for seven spot crypto ETFs, including a doge ETF, a trump ETF, a bonk ETF, and an XRP ETF.

“The launch of the Grayscale doge trust — and the subsequent filing to convert it to an ETF — comes at a time when meme coins are increasingly becoming a mainstream crypto asset,” Patrick Young, head of partnerships at Galxe, said. “President Trump himself launched a memecoin, while doge is now linked to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, so it’s a fitting time to launch a more traditional investment product tracking its price.”

Young also noted that with the crypto-friendly administration now in office, ETF providers are scrambling to file their applications to avoid being left behind when the SEC starts approving these filings and the liquidity starts pouring in.

“Grayscale has also filed for solana, litecoin, and XRP ETFs,” he said, “so it’s clearly looking to establish itself as a leader in crypto ETFs while that spot is still up for grabs.”


Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy is a financial journalist who’s written for Dow Jones, The Financial Times Group, and Business Insider.

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Hyperliquid reclaims all-time high

HYPE, the native token powering perpetuals exchange Hyperliquid and its underlying blockchain, rebounded to reclaim its all-time high previously set at the start of the month.

Treasury firms Hyperliquid Strategies and Hyperion DeFi have also rallied as the token increased double digits in the last 24 hours to trade as high as $76.70, rising past its record price set nearly two weeks ago, according to CoinGecko. In the interim between all-time highs, HYPE pulled back to around $53.

The token has several tailwinds, the first coming from ETF flows. Since their inception in May, HYPE ETFs have yet to record negative weekly outflows, posting a cumulative total net inflow of $171.8 million, per SoSoValue.

The second comes from Hyperliquid spending basically everything it earns in fees to buy HYPE, a mechanism embedded into the protocol’s codebase.

The venue’s buyback funding mechanism is set to add a new source of yield. Validators of the network activated “AQAv2,” which means stablecoin deployers will share about 90% of reserve yield revenue on their supply within the protocol.

Around $6.1 billion of Circle’s USDC resides in Hyperliquid, per DefiLlama. Accrual begins on August 26 and the first payment is made on October 3, the network announced in its Discord channel last week.

A substantial amount of capital is riding on different positions of HYPE. In total, a move down to under $53 would result in the liquidation nearly 1.8 million HYPE worth of leveraged long positions on the on-chain perps venue, or $131.7 million, data from CoinGlass shows. For the upside, a climb above $100 results in the liquidation of more than 3 million worth of leveraged HYPE short positions, or $221.5 million.

HYPE’s rebound to all-time high comes after Michael Selig, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, defended his agency’s decision to approve regulated perpetuals, or futures contracts without expiration dates, CNBC reported on Monday.

Last month, the CFTC approved bitcoin perpetual futures trading in the US through regulated prediction markets firm Kalshi and an affiliate of centralized exchange Coinbase.

“Perps are highly likely to become lightly regulated and thus approved in the US,” said David Pakman, head of venture investments at CoinFund.

“We expect to see perps for many different types of assets, from commodities to equities,” Pakman told Sherwood News.

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Crypto market snaps back as sentiment lifts, with altcoins from ethereum to XRP soaring

The market capitalization of the crypto industry has jumped around $83.2 billion in the last 24 hours, with privacy-focused token Zcash and worldcoin, the native cryptocurrency of the network backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, leading market gains, jumping over 22%.

But the last 24 hours have been good across the board:

Investors have been eager to see some positive signs around the Iranian conflict ending, coupled with hopeful outlooks around the CLARITY act, both breathing some life into assets, Kairos Research cofounder Ian Unsworth told Sherwood News.

Simon Shockey, a crypto strategist at crypto wallet infrastructure firm Privy, said the upswing stems from several things converging. He pointed to how alt markets broadly were very oversold following the bug found in Zcash that shook confidence.

Friday, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox said Anthropic didn’t find any more serious bugs with the Zcash protocol after Shielded Labs requested the AI firm run a security audit of the network with Mythos.

Shockey added that the pool of willing sellers has dwindled. Even if structurally, AI is a much more compelling and asymmetric bet in the eyes of allocators, many of these crypto assets have simply run out of marginal sellers despite some shorter-term narrative-driven pumps. The only people left to sell at this point are the teams themselves and VCs.

Net-net: oversold conditions plus exhausted seller bases plus a macro backdrop thats stabilized equals a snapback, especially in names that have real usage or community conviction behind them,” Shockey told Sherwood.

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