Nasdaq files 19b-4 form for Canary Litecoin ETF

Nasdaq has filed an essential form for garnering the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's approval of a spot Litecoin ETF.

The exchange filed a 19b-4 form on behalf of Canary Capital for the 'Canary Litecoin ETF,' dated Wednesday. The fund says U.S. Bancorp Fund Services, LLC will be the administrator and that U.S. Bank N.A. will custody the ETF's cash. Coinbase Custody Trust Company LLC will custody the ETF's litecoin, according to the filing. 

The 19b-4 filing is the second part of a two-step process, coming after Canary Capital's amended S-1 form that it filed on Wednesday. A 19b-4 filing is a document filed by exchanges on behalf of issuers and once filed, and after acknowledgement from the SEC and when published on the Federal Register, starts the clock on the agency's approval process.

Multiple firms have been vying for several different crypto spot ETFs, including ones based on Solana, XRP, among others ahead of what is viewed as a crypto-friendly Trump administration. The SEC previously approved the listing of Bitcoin ETFs in January 2024 and, later that year, Ethereum ETFs . 

Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas recently said a Litecoin ETF has a high chance of becoming the next crypto spot ETF approved in the U.S., in a post on X on Wednesday. 

“We had heard chatter that the Litecoin S-1 had gotten comments back from [the] SEC,” Balchunas wrote in his X post, adding that this “bodes well for our prediction that Litecoin is most likely to be the next coin approved." 

The appointment of a new SEC chair following Gary Gensler's departure on Monday will be a "huge variable," he added. President-elect Donald Trump chose crypto-friendly former SEC commissioner Paul Atkins to lead the agency. Announcement of Atkins' nomination hearing could come in the next few weeks and take place in March. 

Canary first filed its Litecoin ETF S-1 statement with the SEC in October 2024.