Canary Capital Files for US Spot PEPE ETF as Meme Coin Push Reaches SEC

• Canary Capital has filed a Form S-1 with the SEC for a US-based spot PEPE ETF.
• The proposed fund would hold PEPE with a custodian and may keep up to 5% of assets in Ether to cover Ethereum network fees.

Canary Capital is taking the meme coin ETF trade one step further, filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for a spot fund tied to PEPE.

The firm submitted a Form S-1 on Wednesday for the Canary PEPE ETF, a proposed product that would seek to track the price of PEPE by holding the token directly inside the trust. The filing says the trust’s PEPE would be custodied, and it also leaves room for up to 5% of the fund’s assets to be held in Ether to pay transaction fees on Ethereum.

A meme coin filing reaches Wall Street’s front door

The filing is notable mostly because of what PEPE is. This is not a token with a conventional revenue story, yield mechanism or obvious institutional use case. It is a meme asset, and a highly volatile one at that. Even so, ETF issuers are clearly testing how far the post-bitcoin, post-ether product wave can stretch.

That does not mean approval is close, or even likely. An S-1 filing is an opening step, not a finish line. But it does show that issuers think there may be demand, or at least attention, for exchange-traded wrappers around increasingly speculative corners of the crypto market.

PEPE arrives bruised, but still liquid enough to tempt issuers

The timing is awkward in one sense. PEPE is trading about 87.6% below its all-time high of $0.00002803 reached on December 9, 2024, according to CoinGecko.

That said, a large drawdown has not stopped the token from remaining visible, liquid and culturally sticky enough to attract product builders. That may be the real takeaway here. The ETF race is no longer only about the largest crypto assets. It is now edging into instruments built around online attention itself, packaged in a format traditional brokerage accounts can understand.