The debate over when XRP will finally get its spot ETF now has a clear bottleneck, and it has nothing to do with charts or liquidity.
According to SEC schedules, six different applications from Grayscale, 21Shares, Bitwise, CanaryCapital, CoinShares and WisdomTree are stacked between Oct. 18 and Oct. 24, a one-week window that could define whether XRP steps into the same league as Bitcoin and Ethereum or keeps waiting on the sidelines.
The irony is that the technical hurdles were already cleared. Back on Sept. 17, the SEC pushed through new listing standards for commodity-backed trust shares, exactly the kind of framework that makes ETF approvals easier.
Chair Paul Atkins has made no secret of wanting the U.S. to stay competitive in digital assets. Ripple even got a seat at that table earlier this year when Brad Garlinghouse had dinner with the new U.S. government. On paper, the conditions look almost perfect.
One last hurdle
But the government shutdown has frozen the SEC into minimal staffing. Nate Geraci summed it up in a recent post — once the shutdown ends, the ETF floodgates open. Until then, XRP is stalled by politics, not by markets.
If even one of those six filings gets the green light, it would be the first U.S. spot XRP ETF in history, instantly opening the door to billions in institutional flows.
Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs already proved how fast that money can push prices into fresh records. For XRP, the path is similar — but nothing moves until Washington does.