21Shares Joins the Race to Launch an XRP ETF With SEC Filing

Cryptocurrency exchange-traded fund (ETF) issuer 21Shares wants to give American investors exposure to XRP.

The Swiss firm on Friday filed an S-1 form with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch an XRP ETF.

If approved, the 21Shares Core XRP Trust would track the price of the seventh-biggest digital coin by market cap, via shares that trade throughout the day.

The firm said in a statement that it "remains committed to working towards expanding U.S. investor access to the cryptocurrency asset class, and we look forward to driving innovation in the U.S."

XRP is a digital coin created by the founders of fintech company Ripple. 21Shares issues ETFs, and operates spot Bitcoin and Ethereum funds in the U.S. following approvals from the SEC earlier this year.

Other asset managers—including crypto asset manager Bitwise—hope to release an ETF that tracks the price of XRP. Asset manager Grayscale also recently launched an XRP Trust, and has previously converted its similar Bitcoin and Ethereum closed-end funds into proper ETFs once the SEC approved such products for trading.

However, the SEC is currently embroiled in a yearslong lawsuit with the Ripple after hitting the firm with a $1.3 billion lawsuit, alleging that that it sold unregistered securities in the form of XRP.

Ripple last year scored a partial court win against the regulator when a judge ruled that programmatic sales of XRP to retail investors did not qualify as securities. The judge ruled that $728 million worth of contracts for institutional sales did constitute unregistered securities sales, but the news was still widely seen as a win for the crypto industry.

The SEC has since sought a $2 billion fine from Ripple, but a New York court ordered the company pay just a $125 million penalty. The SEC has since appealed, but Ripple appears confident it will prevail again, with the firm's Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty recently telling Decrypt that he believes the move will "backfire" and benefit the crypto industry in the process.

Despite the ongoing legal tussle, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in an interview last week that he believes SEC approval of an XRP ETF is "inevitable" given the regulator's go-ahead to Bitcoin and Ethereum products.

Edited by Andrew Hayward