SEC Approves T. Rowe Price Crypto ETF: XRP Ranks Third Behind BTC and ETH

T. Rowe Price, the 89-year-old investment giant that manages approximately $1.9 trillion in assets for pension funds and retirement savers, has received SEC approval for its first ever crypto fund, and XRP is one of the coins it picked.

The fund, trading under the ticker TKNZ, is the first actively managed multi-coin crypto ETF launched by a major traditional financial institution. While Coinbase and Bitwise launching crypto products is business as usual, T. Rowe Price launching one is a different signal entirely. 

This is a firm that built its reputation managing retirement savings, the kind of money that cannot afford reckless decisions, and it spent years watching the crypto space from the sidelines before concluding the asset class was ready for its clients.

XRP’s Position in the Fund

The fund holds between five and fifteen coins at any given time, selected by T. Rowe Price’s own portfolio managers based on internal research. The lineup runs from Bitcoin and Ethereum at the top through XRP, Solana, Cardano, Avalanche and Chainlink, all the way down to Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, fifteen tokens in total. Custody is handled by Anchorage Digital and the annual fee is 0.75%.

Within the FTSE Crypto US Listed Index that guides the fund’s picks, XRP ranks third with an 11.4% weighting, behind only Bitcoin at roughly 42% and Ethereum at 19%, and ahead of Solana. 

Why This Is Different From a Spot XRP ETF

T. Rowe Price’s clients are financial advisers and retirement savers, the kind of people who will never open a crypto exchange or buy a standalone XRP fund independently. The TKNZ fund gives them a path to own XRP through a brand they already trust, inside accounts they already hold. It opens a door to an entirely different category of investor.

The fund may also eventually stake some of its holdings to generate yield once tax and regulatory rules around staking are clarified, a provision that applies to XRP among other tokens.

The Domino Effect

If rival asset managers launch their own multi-coin ETFs, XRP’s position near the top of every major crypto benchmark means it would likely appear on each eligible list automatically.

The fund does not create XRP demand from scratch. Institutional buying through existing spot XRP ETFs was already happening. What it does is open a new channel to a demographic that has never had easy access to the asset, and it does so through one of the most trusted names in the retirement savings industry.