- Qualifying assets must trade on a surveillance-sharing market and have a six-month futures contract on a regulated exchange.
- Up to one hundred spot crypto ETFs could launch within a year, analysts say, following the new streamlined rules.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has approved new rules for listing certain types of exchange-traded products. These rules apply to products based on physical assets, including cryptocurrencies. This change removes a previous approval process that often required more time.
Under the new standards, a digital asset must meet specific conditions to qualify. The asset must trade on a market that is part of the Intermarket Surveillance Group. It must also have a futures contract trading for at least six months on an exchange regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
What impact will Generic Listing Standards have on the crypto ETP space?
Here's what happened when the SEC passed the "ETF Rule" in late-2019, which created Generic Listing Standards for traditional ETFs: The pace of ETF launches rose from ~117/year to ~370/year.
Expect the… pic.twitter.com/acVRLLt8fw
— Matt Hougan (@Matt_Hougan) September 16, 2025
This type of change has occurred before in traditional finance. When similar rules were applied to standard ETFs, the number of new listings increased substantially. An ETF analyst at Bloomberg indicated that over one hundred spot crypto ETFs could launch within a year.
Here's a list of all the coins that have futures on Coinbase = eligible for spot ETF-ization pic.twitter.com/8hIo95GebT
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) September 17, 2025
ETHNews analysts note that between twelve and fifteen digital assets currently have futures listed on a major exchange. This means spot ETFs for assets like Solana, XRP, and Dogecoin could now be listed without the former delays. The SEC had already approved certain funds focused on Solana and Dogecoin prior to this decision.
