Pepe may follow Dogecoin to Wall Street, but ETF investors aren’t buying the meme hype

Canary Capital put Pepe in the spotlight on Wednesday with the following statement: application For exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that track memecoin prices, the token’s muted reaction could serve as the latest sign of Wall Street’s fervent appetite for assets that trade on atmosphere.

On Thursday, Pepe changed trades at about $0.00000359, up about 0.6% from the previous day, according to . CoinGecko. The previous day’s trading volume was $432 million, an increase of 10%.

Not too long ago, meme coins served as a major growth driver for companies like Wintermute. However, cryptocurrency market makers acknowledged last year that their predictions that core asset managers would debut meme coin ETFs, among others, came true. dogecoinwas intended to be sarcastic.

Currently, four crypto asset management companies offer US-listed Dogecoin ETFs. Still, “it’s still very difficult for institutional investors to build a credible investment rationale around something like Doge, which is probably aimed at individual consumers,” said James Butterfill, head of research at crypto asset management firm CoinShares. decryption.

Dogecoin ranks 17th among all crypto ETFs tracked by CoinShares, generating $13 million worth of inflows since the beginning of the year. Outside of ETF tracking Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solanaand $XRPButterfill noted that ETFs tracking other altcoins account for 9% of total assets under management.

“It’s just not popular with investors,” he says. “It’s the Big Four and not much else.”

decryption has reached out to Canary for comment.

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins shown Last November, it argued that most cryptocurrencies, including meme coins, should not be treated as securities. That sentiment is strengthened SEC guidance issued last month classified meme coins as a type of “digital collectibles.”

under General listing criteria For crypto ETFs, which were launched last year, exchanges can list commodity-based ETFs without requiring separate approval. Among other important factors, the underlying digital asset must have a six-month history of regulated futures trading.

Pepe futures are currently traded on the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken. Canary’s filing states that memecoin contracts “generally trade on regulated or registered exchange venues.”

Canary has filed an ETF to track other meme coins, including Mog, Pudgy Penguins’ PENGU, and President Donald Trump’s meme coin. $Trump. Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg expressed When Canary’s application was filed with the SEC last year, citing a lack of futures trading, there was skepticism that the Trump-linked ETF would pass.

Once upon a time Balchunas noticed to decryption The ETF industry is notorious for “throwing spaghetti at the wall,” he said. Meanwhile, Butterfill on Thursday described the flurry of filings across ETFs by some issuers as a “machine gun approach.”

In some ways, Tuttle Capital Management has taken further steps to appeal to Degen. In January, the ETF issuer applied for leverage. $TrumpBONK, Melania ETF. However, the SEC has not yet issued a final decision on these applications.