The growth of crypto-focused ETFs is expected to accelerate this year, with one seminal meme coin tapped as the likeliest candidate to lead the charge.
“In 2025, a core asset manager will launch a meme coin ETF…Our money’s on DOGE,” crypto trading firm Wintermute wrote in a Friday report.
Traditional financial institutions showed a notable interest in trading meme coins last year, with Solana-based tokens Dogwifhat (WIF), BONK (BONK), and PONKE (PONKE) driving Wintermute’s Over-the-Counter (OTC) market share growth from 0.3% in 2023 to 5.1% in 2024, it wrote.
No asset manager has yet filed for a spot Dogecoin ETF in the U.S., but Jake Ostrovskis, an OTC trader at Wintermute, stood by the firm’s prediction. He acknowledged, however, that Wintemute’s call was intended to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek.
“Volume ultimately drives interest, which ultimately drives indexation,” he said. “If the meme coin sector does continue, you can imagine where it goes, and the most liquid name within that [group] is DOGE.”
Dogecoin was created in 2013 as a joke, parodying the industry with its explicit lack of utility.
Since then, it’s been popularized by tech CEO Elon Musk. Meme coins, in general, have become one of crypto’s hottest trends—even if they trade on little more than vibes and are as volatile as crypto gets.
I remain shocked that no issuer has filed for Dogecoin ETF…
7th largest digital asset by market cap.
Worst case, it’s a marketing expense for the issuer.
Best case, you get an extremely lenient SEC who approves it, along w/ Elon touting it.
— Nate Geraci (@NateGeraci) January 16, 2025
Among traditional financial institutions, OTC spot volumes for meme coins increased 210% from 2023 to 2024, per the report. Overall, meme coins became more popular, representing 16% of Wintermute’s OTC volumes in 2024 compared to 7% in 2023.
OTC trading desks are typically tapped by financial institutions looking to execute large transactions. Within the context of crypto, they can often provide traders with better prices by operating on multiple exchanges instead of just one platform.
As Ostrovskis described it, a portion of Wintermute’s counterparties come from a traditional finance background. The crypto market’s fragmentation can be a headache, with “so many different tokens and so many different chains,” he said.
Dogecoin and Shiba Inu respectively accounted for 53.6% and 34.6% of Wintermute’s OTC volumes in 2024, yet other coins saw an uptick in popularity.
Among the most prevalent were Dogwifhat and Pepecoin (PEPE), which saw volumes increase to 1.4% and 9%, respectively.
Still, Ostrovskis said that shifting narratives within crypto could impact OTC volumes, with Wintermute’s counterparties becoming particularly interested in trading meme coins last March and an “AI angle” toward the end of the year.
“It gets a lot of attention when it’s hot,” he said. “But at the moment, it has cooled down a lot.”
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
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