Photo: Yu Xichao & alfernec (Shutterstock)
Dogecoin took its first steps on Wall Street on Monday. While this is a remarkable achievement for a memecoin that originated as an internet joke, its results have clearly lagged behind other cryptocurrencies that have recently debuted on the U.S. stock exchange.
Dogecoin’s Disappointing Debut #
The very first U.S. Dogecoin fund comes from Grayscale, a crypto asset manager that has packaged numerous cryptocurrencies into exchange-traded funds. This allows investors to gain exposure to the Dogecoin price through their traditional brokers, without needing to buy and manage the coin themselves.
The so-called Grayscale Dogecoin Trust (ticker: GDOG) began trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Monday. The fund was initially launched in January as a closed-end trust for institutional and accredited investors but has now been converted into a spot exchange-traded fund (ETF).
The difference between such a trust and an ETF is significant. The fund was previously limited to institutional and accredited investors and its price could deviate from the actual Dogecoin price. As an ETF, it is freely tradable on the exchange and its price directly tracks the underlying asset.
According to Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, GDOG only recorded $1.4 million in trading volume on its first day.
“Decent for an average launch, but low for a ‘first-ever spot’ product,” he wrote. “Not really surprising. We had a rhyme a while back that predicted this: ’the further you get from BTC, the less assets are left.’”
Last January, a whole list of different Bitcoin funds stormed the market. It went down in history as the best ETF launch of all time, with over $57 billion in inflows to date.
Solana and XRP Set the Pace #
Ethereum received its own U.S. exchange funds last summer, and recently several other altcoins have been added.
Solana was the first at the end of October, and there are now a total of six different funds for it. Bitwise was the first to market and it was immediately crowned the most popular ETF launch of the year with a trading volume of $56 million.
It attracted $69.5 million in capital. So far, all trading days have been positive, and a total of $621.32 million in capital has flowed in, according to data from SoSoValue.
This month, XRP also hit the exchange. Canary Capital was the first and snatched the record from Bitwise with a trading volume of $58 million. And an even more impressive $245 million in capital flowed into the fund. There are now four funds, and a total of $622.11 million has already been welcomed.
The contrast with the competition is stark: the debut volume of Solana and XRP was more than 40 times higher.