XRP jumps to $157bn market cap after SEC ETF acknowledgment. Here’s how likely altcoin ETFs will be approved

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has acknowledged Grayscale’s exchange-traded fund filings for XRP and Dogecoin.

While the recognition is part of the agency’s normal process, it indicates the agency has cracked the door open to more altcoin ETF approvals, analysts said.

“That’s [a] good sign in the case as these altcoins, which in [the] past have been told to withdraw right after filing, bumps up slightly our — already pretty good — odds of approval,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas said on X.

Under former Chair Gary Gensler, the SEC quickly dismissed similar filings, but the agency’s acknowledgment suggests things are changing on the back of Donald Trump’s election win, and his promises to relax crypto rules.

XRP’s price jumped over 12% over the past 24 hours. It now trades at a $157.8 billion market cap.

How likely is it that an XRP ETF or other altcoin ETFs will be approved?

Flood of applications

This year, ETF issuers have flooded the SEC’s inbox with ETF applications for altcoins like Ripple-linked XRP, Solana, Dogecoin, and Litecoin.

“In baseball terms: All of them are rounding first base, except for Litecoin which is headed to third,” Balchunas said.

Litecoin is a Bitcoin clone launched in 2011 when only eight altcoins existed in the market. Many consider it to be the original altcoin.

Balchunas and fellow Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart give Litecoin a 90% chance of approval. A prediction market on Polymarket puts the odds of that happening in 2025 at 87%.

Litecoin’s high approval odds come from the likelihood of the cryptocurrency being classified as a commodity because of its similarity to Bitcoin.

Without the cloud of a possible security token label for Litecoin, the so-called OG altcoin seems to have a more simplified regulatory path compared to others like Solana, said Balchunas.

Balchunas previously described Litecoin ETFs as having “all the boxes checked” for a possible SEC approval in 2025.

Balchunas and Seyffart said Dogecoin is the second most likely altcoin to see the launch of an ETF. They put the odds of that happening at 75%. A Polymarket bet put the odds of that happening at 71%.

They give Solana and XRP a 70% and 65% likelihood of getting ETFs, respectively. Polymarket bets put the odds of them being approved this year at 82% and 81%.

The SEC acknowledged Canary Capital’s Litecoin ETF application earlier in the month.

Correction 14 February: A previous headline suggested that an XRP ETF has been approved. It hasn’t. The headline has been changed to reflect this.

Osato Avan-Nomayo is our Nigeria-based DeFi correspondent. He covers DeFi and tech. Got a tip? please contact him at osato@dlnews.com.