Grayscale’s XRP Trust could pave the way for the launch of an XRP ETF, subject to approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Cointelegraph reported.

Grayscale Investments, a major cryptocurrency investment firm, is launching a new crypto trust tied to the XRP cryptocurrency.

Grayscale officially announced the creation and public launch of the Grayscale XRP Trust on September 12, giving investors exposure to XRP.

The Grayscale XRP Trust is immediately open for daily subscriptions to qualified individual and institutional accredited investors, the company noted. It will operate similarly to Grayscale’s other single-asset investment trusts, investing entirely in the tokens that underpin the XRP Ledger (XRPL).

The Difference Between Crypto Trusts and Crypto ETFs According to a report by Fox Business, the launch of Grayscale’s XRP Trust could pave the way for an XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF), which is a different product.

“Because ETFs are marketed directly to retail investors, they must be approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission, whereas the trusts’ structure and sales strategies to so-called accredited investors are subject to lighter regulation,” reports Eleanor Terrett of Fox Business.

The report also mentioned that Grayscale has released a four-stage product life cycle plan for the XRP Trust, which may hint at the possibility of launching an XRP ETF in the future.

“Each product is designed to follow a four-stage lifecycle – with the ultimate goal of promoting the product to an ETF," Grayscale said on a dedicated FAQ page. "As a product advances through its intended lifecycle, investor access and transparency increases accordingly," the company noted.

Grayscale says XRP has ‘significant real-world use cases’ In the announcement, Grayscale’s head of product and research Rayhaneh Sharif-Askary noted that the Grayscale XRP Trust gives investors exposure to a protocol that has “significant real-world use cases.” He added:

“By facilitating cross-border payments that take just seconds, XRP has the potential to transform traditional financial infrastructure.”

The XRP Ledger is a decentralized public blockchain led by a global business and developer community. XRPL aims to provide multiple use cases such as cross-border payment solutions, tokenization, and decentralized finance.

Grayscale Investments is one of the world’s largest Bitcoin investment firms, holding 222,300 BTC (worth $12.8 billion) in its spot BTC ETF, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC).

Grayscale has become one of the largest sellers of Bitcoin since it first launched GBTC in January. It continues to sell billions of dollars of BTC from the ETF.

Grayscale also saw billions of dollars in outflows from its new products after launching two spot Ethereum ETFs in July.