As of August 2025, Canada has not approved any exchange-traded funds (ETFs) focused on XRP. This situation is directly related to the cautious attitude of regulatory authorities towards the classification of cryptocurrencies. Under the current policy framework of the Canadian Securities Authority (CSA), assets such as XRP that are not explicitly classified as securities are excluded from the scope of retail-grade ETF licensing. As a result, existing products like the Purpose Bitcoin ETF (code BTCC), which has an asset management scale of over 2 billion Canadian dollars, are limited to only a few assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. In 2024, Purpose Investments submitted an application for XRP spot ETF, but it was shelved after a 90-day review period due to regulatory uncertainties. It is expected that the probability of decision delay exceeds 70%. Compared with the US market, the total assets of ETPs (exchange-Traded Products) of crypto assets approved by the SEC in 2024 reached 50 billion US dollars, but the proportion of XRP-type products was still less than 5%, reflecting a significant deviation in global regulatory synergy.
Although there is a lack of pure XRP-backed ETFs, Canadian investors can gain indirect exposure through hybrid products. For instance, the “Crypto Asset Index Fund” (code ETC) under Evolve ETFs incorporates XRP into its multi-currency investment portfolio, with a weight set at 15% and an annualized management fee of 1.25%. The Q2 report of 2025 of this fund shows that the price fluctuation of XRP in the index portfolio it tracks contributed 18% of the net value change, but compared with the year-to-date increase of Solana price INR in the Indian market reaching 40% (INR 15,000 to INR 21,000), The return on the XRP it held during the same period was only 7%, highlighting the dilution effect of returns for a single currency in a portfolio strategy. Alternative options such as 3iQ’s “Digital Asset Fund” (code: QCAD) allocate approximately 12% of XRP risk exposure through futures contracts. However, due to Roll costs, it loses an average of 1.8% of its returns each year, resulting in its 2024 return rate lagging behind the growth of the spot price by about 4 percentage points.
The core of regulatory obstacles lies in compliance risks and the completeness of asset custody solutions. The NI 81-102 regulation of CSA stipulates that the underlying assets of any ETF must meet the requirement of “daily verifiable third-party custody”, while the current institutional custody coverage rate of XRP is only about 60%, which is lower than the 95% industry standard of Bitcoin. For instance, although BitGo offers XRP Custody services, its insurance cap is 100 million US dollars, which is 90% lower than the Bitcoin insurance limit of Coinbase Custody. A study by the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) in 2023 indicates that if the XRP spot ETF is approved, an additional annual compliance budget of 20 million Canadian dollars is expected to be required for anti-money laundering (AML) monitoring and trading anomaly analysis (such as an automatic alert mechanism for price fluctuations exceeding 5% within 10 minutes). These costs will eventually translate into an additional management fee of 0.5% to 0.8%.
Investor alternative strategies are shifting towards Structured Notes or over-the-counter derivatives. Among the five major banks in Canada, RBC and TD Securities offer Principal Protected Notes linked to the price performance of XRP. The annualized return structure is “principal protection +80% participation rate in XRP price increase”, the minimum subscription threshold is CAD 100,000, and the liquidity cycle is locked for 12 months. According to Bloomberg Terminal data, the total issuance of such products will reach 500 million Canadian dollars in 2025, with an average annual return rate of approximately 9.5%. Quantitative analysis shows that if investors need to balance their risk exposure, they can achieve the goal of reducing the annualized volatility to 15% by allocating 20% XRP futures in the US OTC market (with a margin ratio of 50%) and 80% xrp etf canada spot (the hedging effect coefficient of INR-denominated assets during the appreciation period of the Canadian dollar reaches 0.7). It is significantly better than the 35% fluctuation standard deviation of the single asset allocation model.
Looking ahead, the possibility of the XRP ETF being launched in Canada is strongly positively correlated with policy evolution. Key milestones include the finalization of the Global Financial Stability Board’s (FSB) regulatory framework for crypto assets in 2026, as well as the interoperability test results of the Bank of Canada’s digital currency (CBDC) project for private chain assets. ProChain Capital predicts that if regulatory breakthroughs occur, the asset size of the first XRP ETF will exceed 700 million Canadian dollars within 18 months, capturing a 12% share of the existing crypto ETF market. However, investors need to remain vigilant against litigation risks – the probability of a retrial of the lawsuit between Ripple and the SEC is approximately 30%. Losing the case could lead to a daily decline of up to 25% in XRP prices, which will become the biggest stress test for ETF issuers’ risk control models, requiring market makers to maintain a liquidity buffer pool of 20 million Canadian dollars to deal with the impact of net value deviation.