XRP Climbs as First US Spot ETF Sees Serious Demand

The price of XRP rose on Thursday after investors rushed into the first U.S. exchange-traded spot fund to give exposure to the coin. 

The price of XRP coin recently stood at $3.11 after rising about 2% over a 24-hour period, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko. The asset—the third-largest cryptocurrency in the ecosystem—is about 15% below its July all-time high mark of $3.65.

Its rise comes following Thursday’s debut of the Rex-Osprey XRP ETF by financial institutions Rex Shares and Osprey Funds. The fund is the first to give investors exposure to the Ripple-linked asset, and has already received close to $25 million in trading volume after just 90 minutes of trading.

Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas said on X that he was in “semi-shock” at the volume, which was vastly more than XRP futures ETFs saw in initial trading.

“That is way more than I would have thought,” he added. “For context, it’s 5x more than any of the XRP futures ETFs did on day one and it’s only been 90 minutes.”

XRP was created by the founders of fintech Ripple, and is the native token of the XRP Ledger blockchain. Its network is aimed at institutions or banks that wish to move money quickly. 

The Rex-Osprey XRP ETF comes the same day the first ever Dogecoin ETF hits U.S. markets, also by Rex-Osprey: the DOJE ETF. 

DOJE has also had a blistering debut and the price of the meme coin has surged on the ETF’s trading. Balchunas also said Thursday that DOJE attracted nearly $6 million in trading volume in the first hour of trading, which he said “destroyed” his expectation of $2.5 million for the day.

Both ETFs are different to the Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs that hit the market last year in the U.S. The altcoin ETFs offer investors exposure to Dogecoin and XRP via a subsidiary registered in the Cayman Islands that is wholly owned and controlled by the fund.

Rex-Osprey launched the funds via the Investment Company Act of 1940, rather than the Securities Act of 1933 like those aforementioned spot funds. We may see more ETFs for both altcoins and many others soon, however, following a Wednesday SEC order that created generic listing standards for commodity-based funds.

While there’s still room to climb for XRP to hit a new all-time high price, Myriad users believe that it’s more likely to rise and hit a price of $4—a new all-time high—than to fall to $2. Some 60% of users believe it’s headed to $4, with odds growing over the last two weeks.

(Disclaimer: Myriad is a product of DASTAN, Decrypt‘s parent company.)