In brief
- 21Shares launched the first spot DOGE ETF backed by the Dogecoin Foundation on Thursday.
- The product will initially target younger and affluent mainstream investors, the president of 21Shares said.
- It is the third spot DOGE ETF to enter the U.S. market, following products launched by Bitwise and Grayscale.
The Dogecoin Foundation has officially gone Wall Street.
A spot Dogecoin ETF backed by the organization began trading in traditional financial markets this morning, launching on the Nasdaq under the ticker TDOG. The product will allow retail and institutional investors to gain exposure to the world’s first meme coin—without relying on self-hosted wallets or crypto exchanges.
The Dogecoin Foundation is a nonprofit that has overseen Dogecoin’s decentralized development and supported the token’s community since 2014. While two other spot DOGE ETFs previously launched in November—one from Grayscale, the other from Bitwise—today’s, issued by 21Shares, is the first and only to have gained the endorsement of the token’s foundation.
It is, further, the first spot Dogecoin ETF to have gained the approval of the SEC. The Grayscale and Bitwise ETFs launched in November, immediately following the U.S. government shutdown, and went live via an automated process that did not involve explicit agency approval. Earlier this month the SEC greenlit the 21Shares DOGE ETF, effectively concluding that Dogecoin is not a security for the first time.
Duncain Moir, president of 21Shares, told Decrypt he expects the product will appeal principally to younger, affluent traders who want some crypto exposure, but invest broadly and rely on a traditional broker.
“I do expect the younger generation, which has spent a little bit of time looking at crypto, is now looking at what’s next,” Moir said.
After Bitcoin and Ethereum’s successes on Wall Street, Moir is confident Dogecoin could be next in line. The token has a massive online following, a $21 billion market cap, and a distinctively positive fanbase—a one-of-a-kind combination for crypto, he said.
The ETF’s rollout also comes as part of a broader push by House of Doge—the relatively new corporate arm of the Dogecoin Foundation, backed by Elon Musk’s personal attorney, Alex Spiro—to evolve Dogecoin from an intentionally utility-less meta joke to a global payment rail.
21Shares is a fan of that more adult-sounding pitch for Dogecoin, and has adopted it as well. But that doesn’t mean the company hasn’t received some skepticism as it rolls out institutional and retail access to the world’s first meme coin. Muir, though, said he doesn’t mind the pushback.
“If nobody was skeptical,” he said, “it wouldn’t be as interesting an investment product in the first place.”
Daily Debrief Newsletter
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
Source: https://decrypt.co/355336/dogecoin-foundation-backed-21shares-doge-etf-launches-on-nasdaq
