Grayscale withdrew its ETF registration applications for ADA, DOT, and HBAR in just 190 seconds

Grayscale Investments Sponsors, LLC has filed three withdrawal requests (under Form RW) with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to remove the registered prospectuses for the Grayscale Cardano Trust ETF, Grayscale Hedera Trust ETF, and Grayscale Polkadot.

8/11/20265 min read

Sequence of events

The withdrawal timeline shows that the filing of Form RW on August 7th was the final step in a process that, in fact, had been quietly underway for nearly a year before Grayscale officially announced it. Grayscale began pursuing ETF proposals for Cardano and Polkadot in February 2025, and filed their respective S-1 applications on August 29, 2025. The application for Hedera was filed next on September 9, 2025. Before any of those S-1 applications took effect, the listing proposals on the relevant exchanges were withdrawn by those exchanges themselves: NYSE Arca withdrew its Cardano listing proposal on September 29, 2025, and Nasdaq withdrew both its Polkadot and Hedera ETF proposals on November 3, 2025.

When an exchange withdraws its listing proposal but the issuer maintains the registration, the product is technically in a state of "legal inactivity." The S-1 filing remains valid, but the listing cannot proceed without a new proposal from the exchange on behalf of the fund. The nine-month period between the exchange's withdrawal of the proposal (November 2025) and the S-1 filing's withdrawal (August 7, 2026) suggests that Grayscale maintained the registrations as contingency plans rather than abandoning them immediately; they may have waited to assess whether market conditions, regulatory clarity from the CLARITY Act, or renewed interest from the exchange would create an opportunity for deployment, but ultimately those conditions did not materialize.

The CME threshold was exceeded two days after the application was withdrawn.

The most noteworthy analytical aspect of this withdrawal process is the parallel with a key legal milestone for Cardano. On August 9, 2026, ADA surpassed the 75-day trading threshold for futures contracts regulated by CME — a criterion the SEC previously used to approve spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs. This is a milestone issuers typically aim for as a basis for filing spot ETF applications, rather than abandoning them as soon as they achieve it. However, Grayscale withdrew its Cardano ETF application on August 7, just two days before ADA met this requirement.

Placing these events side-by-side doesn't necessarily indicate Grayscale made a timing error or overlooked information regarding the upcoming milestone. The 75-day futures trading threshold is a condition that other issuers and exchanges can leverage to build a legal argument for Cardano ETF approval; furthermore, the withdrawal of the application under Form RW does not prevent Grayscale or any other issuer from resubmitting a Cardano ETF application in the future. What this timeline confirms is that Grayscale's internal assessment of the economic viability of the ADA, DOT, and HBAR ETFs—including market demand, potential fee revenue, competitive position relative to other altcoin ETF issuers, and likelihood of approval—led to the decision to terminate these three applications without waiting for the CME threshold that ADA was about to reach.

What remains in the product portfolio is currently being rolled out by Grayscale.

While the withdrawal of applications for ADA, DOT, and HBAR has narrowed the gap, it hasn't completely emptyed Grayscale's portfolio of altcoin ETFs. As of August 8th, five single-token ETF applications remain in the preliminary stages: Bittensor, Aave, BNB, NEAR Protocol, and Zcash. Two staking product applications have progressed further: the Avalanche Staking ETF is scheduled to take effect in March 2026, and the Hyperliquid Staking ETF is scheduled to take effect in June 2026; this demonstrates Grayscale's broader cryptocurrency ETF strategy continues to evolve towards assets they deem to have stronger trading prospects.

Grayscale also updated information on the Ethereum Staking Mini ETF on August 7th, the same day the three aforementioned withdrawals occurred, by filing an amended prospectus allowing the fund to begin distributing cash proceeds from Ethereum staking rewards to shareholders monthly, with a minimum frequency of quarterly. This update to the Ethereum staking rewards cash distribution mechanism follows the signing of a revised trust agreement on August 6th, representing a product improvement for an already operational fund rather than a withdrawal; this confirms that the August 7th activities included both portfolio streamlining and improvements to existing products, and not a sign that the company is withdrawing from the ETF business.

Recently, in July 2026, Grayscale filed a preliminary S-1 application for the Worldcoin ETF, and two days before withdrawing the three aforementioned applications, their analysts published a report warning that the United States risked facing a wave of cryptocurrency capital flight if the CLARITY Act was not passed; these moves show that the organization remains actively involved in both product development and policy advocacy aspects of the cryptocurrency ETF market, even as they removed three stalled altcoin products.

Assessment and Conclusion

Grayscale's withdrawal of its filing reduces, but does not completely eliminate, the path toward institutional ETFs for ADA, DOT, and HBAR. No other major asset managers have yet announced plans to register spot ETFs for these three asset classes; this means the withdrawal has brought the race for institutional ETFs for all three tokens back to square one, while no alternative filings have yet appeared on the list of applications under SEC review. The significant milestone of Cardano's CME futures contract threshold creates a legal basis that any issuer could leverage; at the same time, the withdrawal under Form RW does not create any legal barrier preventing new ADA ETF registrations from any funder, including Grayscale itself.

The broader message from this withdrawal concerns prioritizing resources in the highly competitive altcoin ETF market, rather than making a definitive conclusion about the attractiveness of ADA, DOT, or HBAR as tightly regulated financial products. With approximately 200 cryptocurrency ETF applications under review by the SEC (according to data released by the Investment Management Agency in April 2026), asset managers face a resource allocation dilemma: which altcoin ETF proposals should be maintained, promoted, and invested in to cover compliance costs? Grayscale's decision to remove three stalled applications reflects these resource constraints, rather than a negative assessment of the long-term acceptance prospects of the three tokens by financial institutions.

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