Author: Tom Carreras, CoinDesk; Compiled by: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

Bloomberg ETF analysts said that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission may be preparing a Litecoin ETF application.

If so, they predict Litecoin is the cryptocurrency most likely to get its own ETF.

However, incoming SEC leadership could change that.

With just four days left before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will also have new leadership, and more cryptocurrencies may soon join Bitcoin (BTC) ) and Ethereum (ETH) and get its own spot exchange-traded fund (ETF).

Two ETF analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence, Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart, said that among them, Litecoin (LTC) is likely to be the first to receive approval.

“Canary Funds has just filed an amended S-1 filing for its Litecoin ETF application. While there is no guarantee, this may indicate that the SEC is involved in the application,” Seyffart posted on X say.

“We heard that the Litecoin S-1 filing has received a response from the SEC,” Balchunas wrote, adding that the revised filing “foreshadows our prediction that Litecoin is most likely to be the next An Approved Cryptocurrency ”

Additionally, the Nasdaq filed a Form 19b-4 for Canary Funds’ Litecoin ETF on Thursday, meaning the SEC will now be forced to do so. Approve or reject the ETF over the next year. LTC is up 18% in the past 24 hours.

Why Litecoin? With a market cap of $8.8 billion, Litecoin is the 11th largest cryptocurrency on the CoinDesk 20 (an index of the top 20 cryptocurrencies excluding stablecoins, meme coins and exchange coins) and 24th overall.

But Litecoin is a fork of Bitcoin, which means its protocol follows the same basic rules as Bitcoin; for example, it uses a proof-of-work consensus mechanism. Importantly, contrary to larger cryptocurrencies such as Solana (SOL) and Ripple (XRP), the SEC has never called Litecoin a security.

“We expect a wave of cryptocurrency ETFs to emerge next year, although not all at once,” Balchunas wrote in December. “The first thing that comes out will probably be a combined Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF, then maybe Litecoin (because it’s a fork of Bitcoin = a commodity), then HBAR (because it’s not labeled as a security), and then XRP/Solana (labeled as a security in pending litigation). ”

However, the SEC under Paul Atkins may treat the crypto industry differently than under Gary Gensler, Balchunas Point out that this is a "huge variable".