Canary Capital has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch a spot exchange-traded fund tracking the popular meme coin, PEPE.
summary
- Canary Capital has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a PEPE memecoin-linked spot ETF, with holdings primarily in PEPE and a small allocation to ether for transaction fees.
- The filing comes as PEPE remains sharply below its peak in 2024, while ownership data shows high concentration with the top 10 portfolios controlling around 41% of supply.
Form S-1 foot With the SEC on behalf of the CANARY PEPE ETF, the fund says the fund will seek to track the price of the digital asset while holding the underlying tokens with a third-party digital custodian.
The fund will also include up to 5% of the wallet value in Ether to pay transaction fees on the Ethereum network.
For those who don’t know, PEPE is a cryptocurrency based on the fictional character created by Matt Furie, Pepe the Frog. The frog-themed meme gained massive traction in 2024 and has since become a staple among speculative trading circles.
Over the years, the token has gained a massive online following and attracted major investors such as the co-founder of BitMEX Arthur Hayeswho has publicly defended the currency’s potential.
At the time of writing, meme trading is well below its all-time high, and data from blockchain explorer Etherscan indicates that more than 250,000 unique wallets contain Pepe. However, the record indicates that a large portion of this supply is concentrated due to whale wallets.
Canary Capital highlighted this risk in its filing and warned investors of the “highly concentrated” nature of token distribution.
“As of January 2026, the ten largest PEPE portfolio addresses collectively accounted for approximately 41% of the total circulating supply,” the filing said.
A PEPE token ETF could help spark new liquidity and interest in the token in the short term, but it remains to be seen whether the asset will remain in demand among the institutional players who are the primary target of ETFs.
There is only one memecoin that has its own ETF, and that is Dogecoin. Grayscale launched the Grayscale Dogecoin Trust (and subsequent ETF) in November, but the product It saw a lackluster performance at launch.
The PEPE coin ETF proposal adds further diversification to Canary Capital Offeringswhich includes several other funds that track altcoins such as Solana, XRP, and Litecoin.
