Solana, XRP ETFs Next After Ethereum, Bitcoin Approvals: Standard Chartered

More crypto ETFs are coming. 

That’s according to British multinational bank Standard Chartered, whose digital assets researcher said in a Friday note that Solana and XRP will soon get their own exchange-traded funds. 

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) yesterday approved eight spot Ethereum ETFs. The unexpected and historic move means that traditional investors can now buy shares which track the price of the second-biggest digital asset. The move follows approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs back in January.

Geoffrey Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s head of crypto research and emerging market foreign currencies, said that it is now only a matter of time before other major digital coins receive the ETF wrapper status. 

“For other coins (eg. SOL, XRP) markets will look ahead to their eventual ETF status as well, albeit this is likely a 2025 story not a 2024 one,” he wrote. 

“Other ETH-like coins (a number of which the SEC claimed were securities in the 2023 XRP case) are also not securities,” Kendrick continued. “In several cases the core technology is so similar to ETH it would be difficult for the SEC to claim they were securities given the ETH position.”

Industry observers and analysts were pessimistic about the approval of spot Ethereum ETFs this week, because the SEC had barely engaged with from asset managers hoping to drop the funds. 

Then, the fund managers seeking to launch the products started frantically filing amended paperwork to move the process along, amid speculation of a politically fueled change in philosophy. By Thursday afternoon, the SEC had given them the green light.

The approval of the Ethereum ETFs is surprising because the regulator had cracked down—and harshly, according to some lawmakers—on the crypto industry. One high-profile lawsuit against the Wall Street watchdog even alleged that the SEC wanted to designate Ethereum as a security, and not a commodity. 

In 2023, Ripple, a fintech company whose founders launched XRP, scored a partial court win against the SEC when a judge ruled that programmatic sales of XRP to retail investors did not qualify as securities, which the SEC had alleged. 

Though the judge did rule that $728 million worth of contracts for institutional sales did constitute unregistered securities sales, the industry interpreted the news as positive. 

Under SEC chair Gary Gensler, the regulator has claimed a number of coins and tokens are securities, and are therefore breaking the law by offering sales to investors. 

Kendrick added in his note that by the end of the year, Ethereum should reach $8,000 per coin. 

The bank’s researcher previously said that Bitcoin could reach $150,000 per coin by the end of 2024. He added today that price was still realistic with the continued success of the ETFs.

Edited by Andrew Hayward