Vanguard Opens Crypto Access After Two-Year Holdout

Roxanna Islam, head of sector and industry research at VettaFi, joined host Nate Geraci this week on ETF Prime to discuss major developments in the crypto ETF space and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s (GS) $2 billion acquisition of Innovator ETFs.

The biggest news came from Vanguard Group, which finally opened its brokerage platform to spot crypto ETFs nearly two years after the first spot Bitcoin ETFs launched. Islam called it big news for the crypto ETF industry, noting Vanguard’s 50 million customers could drive inflows. She pointed to a Vanguard blog post citing market maturity and evolved investor preferences as reasons for the shift, though the firm stated it has no plans to launch its own crypto products.

Bank of America Corp. (BAC) also announced its advisors can recommend 1% to 4% crypto allocations starting in January, which helped push Bitcoin prices up about 5%.

Islam highlighted strong demand for newly launched spot crypto ETFs despite recent price pullbacks. Bitwise Asset Management’s Solana ETF has attracted over $800 million in net inflows since late October. Total spot Solana assets across products reached $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion. Spot XRP ETFs have also performed well, with Canary Capital’s product gathering over $350 million and total spot XRP assets surpassing $1 billion.

On the Goldman Sachs deal, Islam said the acquisition immediately makes Goldman the leader in defined outcome ETFs. Innovator pioneered the buffer ETF space and manages roughly $28 billion to $30 billion across 150 ETFs. She noted the space has grown from $5 billion to about $75 billion over the past five years.

Islam also addressed the SEC pushing back on filings for five times leveraged ETFs from nine issuers. While she enjoys leveraged ETFs as trading tools, she said five times leverage “is a lot for anyone.”

The episode also featured Petra Bakosova, CEO of Hull Tactical and portfolio manager of the Capitol Series Trust Hull Tactical US ETF (HTUS). Bakosova discussed her firm’s quantitative approach to managing S&P 500 exposure using roughly 40 indicators including valuation metrics, market breadth, volatility measures and sentiment data. The strategy adjusts market exposure daily to balance risk and return.

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