SEC Approves First 3x Bitcoin and Ether ETFs in U.S. History

Published October 7, 2026, 01:30 UTC. Based on SEC Release No. 34-106577 (Oct. 2, 2026), Volatility Shares’ Form S-1 filing, and reporting by CoinDesk, CoinCentral, and Blockchain Reporter.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has approved the first triple-leveraged Bitcoin and Ether funds in the country’s history. On October 2, 2026, the SEC cleared Cboe BZX to list and trade six 3x leveraged exchange-traded products from Volatility Shares, with the crypto pair, the 3x Bitcoin ETF (proposed ticker BITH) and the 3x Ether ETF (proposed ticker ETHK), leading the lineup, CoinDesk reported.

The six 3x funds

The approval order, Release No. 34-106577, was signed by the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets under delegated authority and covers six products: 3x Bitcoin, 3x Ether, 3x gold, 3x silver, 3x crude oil, and 3x natural gas. Each fund is a series of the VS Trust, sponsored by Volatility Shares LLC, with Wilmington Trust serving as trustee and U.S. Bank as custodian, Blockchain Reporter reported.

Cboe filed the proposed rule change on August 10, 2026. It was published for public comment on August 19 and drew no comments before the October 2 approval.

Futures, not spot coins

Unlike spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs, the new funds will not hold the cryptocurrencies themselves. Their main exposure will come from regulated CME futures contracts, with cash and cash equivalents used as collateral and margin, and they are registered as commodity-based trust shares rather than conventional 1940 Act funds. The Ether fund will not stake ETH or receive staking rewards, Blockchain Reporter reported.

The order does not mean trading starts now. Volatility Shares still needs the SEC to declare each fund’s Form S-1 registration statement effective before a single share trades, and the approval sets no deadline. The issuer has not announced a launch date.

Capped at 2x until now

The approval is a milestone because U.S. crypto funds had previously been capped at 2x leverage, including Volatility Shares’ own 2x Bitcoin fund BITX and 2x Ether fund ETHU. Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas described the approval as a milestone for the issuer on X.

The clearance also lands at a telling moment. Just weeks earlier, the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act, the market-structure bill meant to split crypto oversight between the SEC and the CFTC, leaving Congress divided while regulated investment products keep expanding, CoinDesk reported.

The daily reset that eats returns

Each fund targets three times the daily performance of its benchmark, then resets exposure at the end of every trading day. That daily reset means multi-day returns can drift far from a simple 3x multiple, sometimes in the opposite direction.

“Leveraged ETFs are for trading, not investing,” Balchunas said on X. Blockstream CEO Adam Back put it more bluntly: “Auto re-leveraging strategies bleed capital in a sideways chop, especially with a high volatility underlying… like bitcoin,” CoinDesk reported.

Volatility Shares itself warns of the drag in its prospectus. “The more volatile the benchmark, the greater the potential for volatility decay,” the preliminary filing said. The filing is also blunt about who should trade the products: an investment in the 3x Bitcoin ETF “may be deemed speculative, and should be considered only by persons who can bear the risk of total loss,” according to the Form S-1.

Futures add another cost. As contracts near expiry, the funds must sell them and buy later-dated ones, a roll that often carries a steady drag on long-term returns, the same criticism leveled at the first Bitcoin futures ETFs in 2021.

This article is news reporting and is not investment advice.

Sources

• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Release No. 34-106577, approval of Cboe BZX rule change to list six 3x leveraged ETPs (Oct. 2, 2026), primary source
• Volatility Shares LLC, Form S-1 preliminary prospectus for the 3x Bitcoin ETF and 3x Ether ETF, primary source
• CoinDesk, SEC approves first 3x bitcoin and ether ETFs in the U.S. (Oct. 5, 2026)
• Blockchain Reporter, SEC Approves 3x Leveraged Bitcoin, Ether ETPs (Oct. 5, 2026)
• CoinCentral, SEC Approves First 3x Leveraged Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs (Oct. 6, 2026)