Canary Capital to Launch First U.S. ETFs Tracking Litecoin and Hedera on Nasdaq

After months of speculation around timing, Canary Capital is finally set to debut its Hedera (HBAR) and Litecoin (LTC) spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tomorrow (Tuesday US time).

In a statement to crypto journalist and podcast host Eleanor Terret, Canary’s CEO Steven McClurg confirmed the timing.

Litecoin and Hedera are the next two token ETFs to go effective after Ethereum. We look forward to launching tomorrow.

Steven McClurg, Canary Capital CEO

Eric Balchunas, Bloomberg’s senior ETF analyst, also confirmed that the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has posted listing notices for the launch of both the Hedera and Litecoin ETFs, in addition to a Solana ETF from Bitwise, to go live tomorrow.

“The Exchange has just posted listing notices for Bitwise Solana, Canary Litecoin and Canary HBAR to launch TOMORROW and grayscale Solana to convert the day after. Assuming there’s not some last min SEC intervention, looks like this is happening,” Balchunas said on X.

At the time of writing, data from CoinGecko showed HBAR had seemingly responded strongly to the news, surging 6.5% on the day, while Litecoin was fairly steady down around 1%.

The launch of these ETFs has taken many by surprise, coming as they do in the middle of a US federal government shutdown. Ordinarily, ETF applications wouldn’t be able to clear the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) approval process during a shutdown, but according to Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart, this changed after the SEC issued a guidance letter earlier this month after the government shutdown began.

In that letter, the SEC clarified that ETF applicants could amend their S-1 registration statements to remove text known as the delaying amendment, which allows the SEC to delay decisions on approvals. By removing this delaying amendment and adding new specific text prescribed by the SEC, the applications automatically come into effect after 20 days.

And this is precisely what Canary Capital did. Following the publication of the SEC’s guidance letter, Canary re-filed its applications for the HBAR and Litecoin ETFs on October 7, removing the delaying amendment and adding the required text. This change, however, went entirely unnoticed until news began leaking out that the ETFs will be launching imminently — prompting people, including Seyfartt, to go back and check the filings.

As part of the process, applicants must also file an 8-A form before trading can commence. Canary filed two of these Monday US time — one for the HBAR ETF and one for the Litecoin ETF.

Related: AUDD Launches Natively on Hedera, Pioneering Australian Dollar Stablecoin Innovation

ETF Launch Latest In String of Announcements for Hedera 

The news of the launch of the HBAR-based US spot ETF follows other recent signs of broader institutional adoption for the Hedera network.

In July, Hedera was named as one of only a handful of public layer-1 distributed ledgers to be chosen to participate in the Reserve Bank of Australia-led Project Acacia. Project Acacia is a research initiative which aims to explore how digital assets and distributed ledger technology can support wholesale tokenised markets — potentially including a wholesale Central bank digital currency (CBDC).

Related: RBA Kicks Off Phase Two of Project Acacia with Wholesale CBDC and Tokenisation Trial

Just last week, the UK’s central bank, the Bank of England, also chose Hedera to participate in its DLT Challenge, which, much like Project Acacia, aims to explore how distributed ledger technology (DLT) can improve wholesale central bank settlement.

Last week, T. Rowe Price, a US-based asset management firm with over a trillion dollars of assets under management, filed for a new actively managed basketed crypto ETF, which is expected to contain between 5 and 15 different cryptocurrencies. Both HBAR and LTC are listed as meeting the criteria for inclusion in the fund.

Reacting to the filing, Balchunas said on X he was surprised that the usually conservative asset manager would create this kind of product.

“SEMI-SHOCK: T Rowe Price just filed for an Active Crypto ETF. They are a Top 5 active manager by assets (mostly mutual funds),” adding “Did not expect it but I get it. There’s gonna be land rush for this space too.”