The wave of altcoin ETFs: online, declared and upcoming crypto funds

In the past two years, the pattern of cryptocurrency ETFs has changed: from two yuan to more yuan, income has become the key to the decisive decision.

Two years ago, there were only two cryptocurrency spot ETFs on the U.S. market. Today, Solana and XRP funds are online and continue to attract money. BlackRock has launched an Ethereum pledge product, and Gray has just submitted an application to include Sam Altman's iris scanning token on the Nasdaq trading code. The wave of altcoin ETFs has arrived, and the key to determining the outcome lies in one characteristic: earnings. The following is the complete version.

I will analyze each fund one by one for you.

Online products

Bitcoin : As a veteran product, the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF holds more than 1 million bitcoins in total. Among them, BlackRock's IBIT reported net assets of $44.95 billion in early July. But the challenge this year is: for the full year of 2026, the net outflow will be approximately US$4.8 billion (data source: Farside). These funds are huge, but they are currently selling more than buying.

Ethereum : Spot Ethereum ETF has been online since 2024, but what really matters is the new product: BlackRock's Ethereum pledge product. The product attracted approximately US$100 million in funding on its first day of launch. It passed on about 3% of pledge proceeds to investors, a feature that made it so successful.

Solana: Solana Fund has enabled pledge functionality since its launch, making it one of the first cryptocurrency ETFs to pay earnings to investors. During the market downturn, they quietly attracted a small number of sustained positive capital flows, with a net inflow of US$8.1 million during the most recent week reporting period.

XRP: The XRP spot ETF will be launched at the end of 2025, raising a total of approximately US$1.44 billion in the initial period. As the market cooled overall, its momentum slowed, but it still achieved a net inflow of US$8.2 million last week, slightly higher than Solana.

Newly filed application

Worldcoin: Gray has filed an application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch the first U.S. spot ETF to track the Worldcoin project WLD tokens. It plans to be listed on Nasdaq under the trading symbol GWLD. The product will allow traditional investors to gain compliance exposure to Sam Altman's biometric identity project without having to touch digital wallets or iris scanning devices. After the announcement, the WLD token price rose 8%.

The significance of this matter goes far beyond the WLD itself. Worldcoin is a mid-market cap token with a controversial concept. The ETF application for this currency shows that the issuer believes that the regulatory path has gone far beyond mainstream blue-chip currencies.

How pledge changes the rules of the game

Here is the core logic that runs through all this.

The first-generation cryptocurrency ETFs had one design flaw: they only provided price exposure and nothing else. If you hold and pledge your own tokens, you will get income; if you hold an ETF, you will have to give up this income in exchange for convenience. For proof-of-stake (PoS) assets, ETF packaging is actually worse than holding the asset itself.

Solana's ETF broke this situation by enabling pledge functionality. Now, Ethereum also achieves this with BlackRock's products. ETFs are no longer a compromise option, and flow of funds data confirms this: Income-based products have attracted inflows when non-income bitcoin funds lost billions of dollars.

Bitcoin cannot replicate this model because it has no pledge mechanism. At a time when the Federal Reserve holds interest rates at 3.50% to 3.75%, investors compare all assets to U.S. Treasury yields. This asymmetry is by no means a trivial matter. It is arguably the most important structural change in the cryptocurrency product sector during this cycle.

What may happen next

Judging from the product reserve pipeline, the trend is very clear. Issuers are expanding out from mainstream currencies, first into large-cap altcoins, and then to themed tokens. Applications filed by Grayscale, Bitwise, Franklin Templeton, VanEck and others for multiple assets, as well as waves of revised registration forms, indicate that this is an ongoing queue rather than a one-time event.

The most likely short-term candidates are those remaining large-cap tokens with clear arguments for commodity attributes, followed by those associated with well-known brands or narratives. The bottleneck lies not in market appetite, but in the regulatory framework, which raises the most critical question.

Constraints: Rules remain unclear

All of the above ETFs operate in a U.S. environment that lacks comprehensive cryptocurrency legislation. The CLARITY Act, which aims to formally divide regulatory powers between the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), passed the House of Representatives in 2025 and was approved by the Senate Banking Committee. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins also publicly expressed support on July 29. However, a full Senate vote has not yet been scheduled, and a vote before recess now seems unlikely, and the timeline may be postponed until September.

Before the bill was passed, each new altcoin ETF was negotiated on a case-by-case basis rather than a standardized process. This is why applications appear in batches and stagnate in stages. If the bill is finally approved, product queues could accelerate sharply.

What this means for investors

Three practical points:

An ETF itself is not a bullish signal. Bitcoin has the largest and most successful cryptocurrency ETF, but its price has fallen by about 50% from its high. ETF packaging creates channels, not demand.

Earnings are now the distinguishing factor. If you are hesitant when choosing a cryptocurrency product, you should first ask the pledge question clearly. This determines whether your fund is competing with the assets it holds or letting you quietly lose 3% of your earnings every year.

Differences in rates and structures are greater than people think. Judging from the application documents, rate competition is intensifying, and the rates for some products have dropped to around 0.14%. Please be sure to read the prospectus, paying special attention to the processing of pledges, custody arrangements, and how the fund handles abnormal events such as bifurcations.

Conclusion

The wave of altcoin ETFs has arrived: Solana and XRP funds have been launched and continue to attract gold. BlackRock's Ethereum pledge product received US$100 million on its first day of launch. Gray's application for Worldcoin shows that issuers are making great strides into areas other than blue-chip coins. The core feature of this generation of products is pledge proceeds, which fixes the design flaws of the first generation of cryptocurrency ETFs and structurally disables Bitcoin in this dimension.

The constraint lies in regulation: without the CLARITY Act, each product launch can only be tailored to suit its needs. Pay attention to what happens in the Senate in September, pay attention to which products provide pledge functions, and remember: ETF listings create channels, not automatic demand. Funds are coming, but whether funds will follow is another question.

This article does not constitute investment advice. Cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile, and the ETF product itself also involves considerations such as rates, structure and custody. Please be sure to read the prospectus and conduct your own research.