Grayscale withdrew registration statements for three planned altcoin exchange-traded products on August 7, 2026, ending the current registration process for its Cardano, Hedera, and Polkadot funds. The asset manager filed Form RW with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for the three trusts—Cardano (No. 333-289948, originally filed August 2025), Hedera (No. 333-290129, filed September 2025), and Polkadot (No. 333-289949, filed August 2025)—in a span of exactly 190 seconds, between 4:33:37 p.m. and 4:36:47 p.m. ET.
Each filing states that the registrations never became effective and that no securities were issued or sold. Grayscale said it no longer intends to proceed with the planned distribution of shares, but gave no commercial, demand-related, or regulatory reason for the decision. The withdrawals are not SEC rejections, and nothing prevents Grayscale from filing again later.
The move follows earlier exits on the exchange listing side: NYSE Arca withdrew its proposed rule change for the Grayscale Cardano Trust on September 29, 2025, while Nasdaq withdrew proposals for the Polkadot and Hedera trusts on November 3, 2025. Since then, SEC generic listing standards adopted in September 2025 allow qualifying commodity-based trust shares to list without a separate exchange rule change, though an effective S-1 is still required to sell shares.
Grayscale’s broader altcoin slate remains active. The SEC declared the Grayscale Avalanche Staking ETF effective on March 11 and the Grayscale Hyperliquid Staking ETF effective on June 2. Registrations for Bittensor, Aave, BNB, NEAR, and Zcash are still at various stages. The withdrawals therefore do not signal a companywide retreat from altcoin exchange-traded products, but they underscore heightened uncertainty around institutional demand for non-Bitcoin, non-Ethereum crypto ETFs.
