Canary's XRP ETF Off to Hot Start, Has 'Good Shot' of Breaking Record: Analyst

Could an XRP fund produce the year's hottest start for any exchange-traded fund?

It's possible, according to Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas, who wrote on X Thursday that the newly offered Canary XRP ETF—which began trading on Thursday—had already beaten his full-day estimate for trading volume after just 30 minutes on the open market.

Balchunas had set a full-day target of $17 million worth of trading volume, but XRPC had already topped $26 million in trading after 30 minutes, per Bloomberg data.

"Wow, gonna blow away my $17M guess," Balchunas wrote, adding that the XRP fund has a "good shot" of topping the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (BSOL) as the largest debut this year with $57 million in volume.

Nashville-based Canary filed an 8-A form with the SEC on Monday to register its XRP ETF, which tracks the spot price of XRP, the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

It's the second U.S. XRP ETF, following Rex-Osprey's September launch. That fund attracted $38 million on day one and now manages over $128 million in assets.

ETF.com Senior Analyst Sumit Roy told Decrypt earlier this week that XRP funds could command significant inflows.

"While Solana is arguably more popular than XRP, Bitwise's Solana ETF managed to become a $500 million fund in two weeks, which suggests that there is demand for funds that provide exposure to crypto assets beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum," he said.

XRP is up about 3% on the day to a price of $2.42 while many other top assets (like Bitcoin and Ethereum) are showing red on the day, with the overall market flat on the day according to CoinGecko.

Analysts told Decrypt that the Canary ETF launch could help boost XRP's price prospects in the near term, along with institutional interest and easing macro concerns—including the end of the U.S. government shutdown late Wednesday.