Pepe May Follow Dogecoin to Wall Street—But ETF Investors Aren't Buying Meme Hype

Canary Capital thrust Pepe into the limelight connected Wednesday with an application for an exchange-traded money that tracks the meme coin’s price, but the token’s muted absorption whitethorn service arsenic the latest motion of Wall Street’s tepid appetite for assets that commercialized connected vibes.

On Thursday, Pepe changed hands astir $0.00000359, up astir 0.6% implicit the past day, according to CoinGecko. The time before, trading measurement roseate 10% to $432 million.

Not agelong ago, meme coins served arsenic cardinal maturation drivers for firms similar Wintermute. Yet the crypto marketplace shaper acknowledged past twelvemonth that its prediction of a halfway plus manager debuting a meme coin ETF, peculiarly Dogecoin, was intended to beryllium tongue-in-cheek.

Today, 4 crypto plus managers connection U.S.-listed Dogecoin ETFs. Still, it remains “very hard for organization investors to conception a credible concern rationale astir thing similar Doge, which is possibly much geared towards the retail audience,” James Butterfill, caput of probe astatine crypto plus manager CoinShares, told Decrypt.

Dogecoin is ranked 17th retired of each crypto ETFs that CoinShares tracks, generating $13 cardinal worthy of year-to-date inflows. Outside of ETFs tracking Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP, Butterfill noted that ETFs tied to different altcoins correspond 9% of full assets nether management.

“They’re conscionable not fashionable with investors,” helium said. “It’s the large 4 and not overmuch else.”

Decrypt has reached retired to Canary for comment.

SEC Chair Paul Atkins indicated past November that astir cryptocurrencies, including meme coins, shouldn’t beryllium treated arsenic securities. That sentiment was bolstered by SEC guidance published past month, which categorized meme coins arsenic a signifier of “digital collectibles.”

Under generic listing standards for crypto ETFs established past year, exchanges are capable to database commodity-based ETFs without requiring case-by-case approval. Among cardinal factors, integer assets underlying them person to person a six-month past of regulated futures trading.

Pepe futures presently commercialized connected crypto speech Kraken. Canary’s filing noted that contracts for the meme coin “are typically traded connected regulated oregon registered trading venues.”

Canary has filed applications for ETFs that way different meme coins, including Mog, Pudgy Penguins' PENGU, and President Donald Trump’s meme coin, TRUMP. Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas expressed skepticism that the Trump-related ETF would walk erstwhile Canary’s exertion landed connected the SEC’s table past year, citing a deficiency of futures trading.

Balchunas erstwhile noted to Decrypt that the ETF manufacture is celebrated for “throwing spaghetti astatine the wall.” Meanwhile, Butterfill described a flurry of filings crossed ETFs from immoderate issuers connected Thursday arsenic a “machine weapon approach.”

Tuttle Capital Management, successful immoderate ways, has taken further steps to entreaty to degens. In January, the ETF issuer filed applications for leveraged TRUMP, BONK, and MELANIA ETFs. But the SEC hasn’t offered a last verdict connected those applications yet.