Pepe May Follow Dogecoin to Wall Street—But ETF Investors Aren't Buying Meme Hype
Canary Capital thrust Pepe into the limelight on Wednesday with an application for an exchange-traded fund that tracks the meme coin’s price, but the token’s muted reaction may indicate that Wall Street investors are already reaching their limit for meme-themed funds.
On Thursday, Pepe changed hands around $0.00000359, up about 0.6% over the last day, according to CoinGecko. The day before, trading volume rose 10% to $432 million. Not long ago, meme coins served as key growth drivers for firms like Wintermute. Yet the crypto market maker acknowledged last year that its prediction of a core asset manager debuting a meme coin ETF, particularly Dogecoin, was intended to be tongue-in-cheek.
Today, four crypto asset managers offer U.S.-listed Dogecoin ETFs. Still, it remains “very hard for institutional investors to construct a credible investment rationale around something like Doge, which has little utility beyond being a fun way to interact with an audience,” James Butterfill, head of research at cryptoasset manager CoinShares, told Decrypt.
Dogecoin is ranked 17th out of all crypto ETFs that CoinShares tracks, generating $13 million worth of year-to-date inflows. Outside of ETFs tracking Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP, Butterfill noted that ETFs tied to other altcoins represent 9% of total assets under management. “They’re just not popular with investors,” he said. “It’s the big four and not much else.”
SEC Chair Paul Atkins indicated last November that most cryptocurrencies, including meme coins, shouldn’t be treated as securities. That sentiment was bolstered by SEC guidance published last month, which categorized meme coins as a form of “digital collectibles.” Under generic listing standards for crypto ETFs established last year, exchanges are able to list commodity-based ETFs without requiring case-by-case approval. Among key factors, digital assets underlying them have to have a six-month history of regulated futures trading.
Pepe futures currently trade on crypto exchange Kraken. Canary’s filing noted that contracts for the meme coin “are typically traded on regulated or registered trading venues.” Canary has filed applications for ETFs that track other 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 pass when Canary’s application landed on the SEC’s desk last year, citing a lack of futures trading.
Balchunas once noted to Decrypt that the ETF industry is famous for “throwing spaghetti at the wall.” Meanwhile, Butterfill described a flurry of filings across ETFs from some issuers on Thursday as a “machine gun approach.” Tuttle Capital Management, in some ways, has taken further steps to appeal to degens. In January, the ETF issuer filed applications for leveraged TRUMP, BONK, and MELANIA ETFs. But the SEC hasn’t offered a final verdict on those applications yet.
