Rex and Osprey want to bring Trump Memecoin to institutions with a new crypto ETF

Crypto issuers certainly seem to believe that anything is possible now that Donald Trump is in office.

Exchange-traded fund issuer Rex Shares and crypto-asset manager Osprey Funds filed for several crypto-focused exchange-traded funds (ETFs), including a Trump ETF, on Tuesday, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday.

The ETF would track the price of TRUMP, the memecoin launched by the president himself on Friday, days before his inauguration. The coin amassed nearly $17 billion in trading volume over the past 24 hours, while falling nearly 25% over the same period.

First Lady Melania Trump also launched her own token called MELANIA, which is currently trading at around $4. Both tokens are memecoins and therefore have no intrinsic value. Traders simply bet that the token’s price will rise or fall.

An ETF that tracks its price would therefore provide no value to buyers.

“This strikes me as issuers pushing for a new SEC administration while at the same time trying a new structure to provide exposure to digital assets in an ETF wrapper,” said James Seyffart, an ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.

The issuers also filed documents to launch an ETF that tracks the price of Dogecoin (DOGE), another memecoin. In one of his first orders, Trump established a “Department of Government Efficiency” by renaming the US Digital Service. While the entity is ostensibly tasked with streamlining certain government agencies and departments, its website at press time featured just an image of the dogecoin mascot.

The SEC under former chairman Gary Gensler was cautious in approving ETFs that tracked cryptocurrencies. It took issuers years to receive the green light to launch a spot bitcoin (BTC) ETF as well as a spot ethereum (ETH) ETF. It is unclear how quickly these latest applications, which also include ETFs tracking BONK (another memecoin), XRP (associated with the company Ripple), and SOL (a layer 1 blockchain), may be approved.

Bloomberg Intelligence Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas called the Trump ETF application “surreal.”

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