Why Litecoin Might Be the Next Crypto to Get Its ETF

With U.S. President-elect Donald Trump lone 4 days distant from inauguration and caller enactment coming to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), further cryptocurrencies whitethorn soon articulation bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) and person their ain spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Of these, litecoin (LTC) is apt to beryllium the archetypal to person the nod, according to Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart, 2 ETF analysts astatine Bloomberg Intelligence.

“Canary Funds conscionable filed an amended S-1 for their litecoin ETF filing. No guarantees — but this mightiness beryllium indicative of SEC engagement connected the filing,” Seyffart posted connected X.

“We had heard chatter that the litecoin S-1 had gotten comments backmost from the SEC,” Balchunas wrote, adding that the amended filing “bodes good for our prediction that litecoin is astir apt to beryllium the adjacent coin approved.”

Why litecoin? With a marketplace capitalization of $8.8 billion, litecoin is lone the 11th largest cryptocurrency successful the CoinDesk 20 (an scale of the apical 20 cryptocurrencies excluding stablecoins, memecoins and speech coins) and 24th biggest coin overall.

But litecoin is simply a bitcoin fork, meaning that its protocol follows the aforesaid basal rules arsenic Bitcoin; it uses a Proof-of-Work statement mechanism, for example. Importantly, the SEC has ne'er called litecoin a security, contrary to larger cryptocurrencies specified arsenic solana (SOL) and ripple (XRP).

“We expect a question of cryptocurrency ETFs adjacent year, albeit not each astatine once,” Balchunas wrote successful December. “First retired is apt the bitcoin and ether combo ETFs, past astir apt litecoin (because it’s a fork of bitcoin = commodity), past HBAR (because not labeled security) and past XRP/Solana (which person been labeled securities successful pending lawsuits).”

Yet the SEC nether Paul Atkins is apt to attack the crypto manufacture successful a antithetic mode than it has nether Gary Gensler, which Balchunas noted was a “huge variable.” Importantly, Canary Funds — which submitted its S-1 filing for a litecoin ETF successful October — has yet to record its 19b-4, meaning determination is presently nary deadline for the SEC to o.k. oregon cull the product.