T. Rowe Price moved deeper into the digital-asset ETF race, filing Amendment No. 2 to its S-1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to widen the scope of its proposed T. Rowe Price Active Crypto ETF. The amendment notably added Dogecoin and Shiba Inu to the investment universe, expanding the product beyond the large-cap crypto names that usually dominate regulated fund discussions.
The filing gives the proposed fund a more flexible and more ambitious identity than a standard passive spot product. Instead of tracking a static basket, the ETF would follow an actively managed strategy built around selecting and rebalancing a portfolio of five to fifteen digital assets from an approved eligibility set.
A More Flexible Crypto ETF With Broader Reach
That eligible universe includes Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, but the inclusion of DOGE and SHIB changes the profile of the product in a meaningful way. By bringing meme coins into the framework, T. Rowe Price is signaling that the fund is meant to be a discretionary crypto vehicle rather than a conservative wrapper around only the most established assets.
According to the amendment, portfolio construction would rely on quantitative models that combine fundamental analysis, valuation metrics, and momentum signals. The proposed approach is designed to pursue outperformance against the FTSE Crypto US Listed Index rather than simply mirror market-cap-weighted exposure.
The filing also confirmed that Anchorage Digital Bank N.A. would serve as custodian for the fund’s on-chain holdings. That custody choice places a regulated digital-asset bank at the center of the ETF’s operating model, reinforcing that asset security and segregation will be central to the proposal’s viability.
Meme Coin Exposure Raises the Stakes
The addition of DOGE and SHIB also introduces a sharper risk profile for a fund being packaged for traditional investors. The filing itself acknowledges that these tokens can experience extreme price swings driven more by social sentiment than by conventional measures of utility or protocol adoption.
That makes the operational burden heavier, not lighter. Managing speculative assets inside a registered ETF requires tighter liquidity monitoring, stronger governance around trading decisions, and clearer disclosure standards to justify how active discretion is being exercised inside a regulated product.
The amendment also shows that the process remains very much alive at the regulatory level. The filing followed an earlier NYSE Arca 19b-4 timetable that had already been extended, suggesting that T. Rowe Price and the SEC are still actively working through the terms of the proposal rather than moving toward an immediate launch.
The filing does not settle whether the ETF will win approval, but it does make the strategy clearer. T. Rowe Price is not merely testing demand for another plain-vanilla crypto fund, but exploring whether a traditional asset manager can bring a broader and more actively managed digital-asset product into the regulated ETF market.
