Canadian XRP ETF Options Get US Green Light as Banks Start Buying

## The clearinghouse filed the paperwork, and US investors can now trade XRP options through Canada The Canadian Derivatives Clearing Corporation confirmed in a Sept. 9 SEC filing that options on two Canadian XRP exchange-traded funds are cleared for sale in the United States. The funds are the Evolve XRP ETF and the Purpose XRP ETF. Both have been trading on the Montreal Exchange since January. The filing, an 8-K submitted under Form S-20, places XRP derivatives alongside options on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana ETFs in the same US-registered category. What that means in practice: American brokers and institutional desks can offer their clients call and put options on XRP without waiting for US regulators to build a domestic framework from scratch. The legal basis comes from earlier Federal Register notices in which the SEC and CFTC classified XRP as a qualifying digital commodity. That designation is what allows US investors to access the Canadian contracts. It does not authorize a spot XRP ETF on a US exchange, which would require a separate application and approval.

Canadian banks are buying, but only through wrappers they trust

Form 13F-HR filings from Canada's largest banks show something unusual. National Bank of Canada reported a position worth about $330,000 in the Bitwise XRP ETF. Bank of Montreal also disclosed XRP-related holdings as part of its broader portfolio diversification.

These are not big numbers relative to the banks' total assets, but they are real positions. Banks do not hold cryptocurrency directly. They buy regulated exchange-traded vehicles, what the industry calls wrappers, that give them indirect exposure without touching wallets or private keys.

The fact that two of Canada's biggest lenders are doing this through ETFs tells you the compliance teams have signed off on the infrastructure. That is the part that matters more than the dollar amount. The filings are still preliminary.

Neither bank has announced a strategic allocation or disclosed a target percentage for crypto within its portfolio. But the precedent is set: once a bank holds an asset class in a regulated vehicle, adding to that position later is a paperwork exercise, not a board-level debate.

The path from summer 2025 to today ran through Toronto

Canada's lead on XRP ETFs did not happen overnight. In the summer of 2025, the Toronto Stock Exchange listed the first physically backed spot XRP ETFs in North America, tied to the CME CF XRP-Dollar Reference Rate. Investors could hold them in tax-advantaged accounts like TFSAs and RRSPs from the start.

That launch created the base layer. Options on those ETFs are a second derivative, they track the ETF's price, which in turn tracks XRP. So when the CDCC filed for US clearance on Sept.

9, it was not building something new. It was extending access to a product that had already been trading domestically for months. Meanwhile, US regulators continued working through their own process.

The Federal Register notices on XRP's commodity classification gave the green light to cross-border access, but the SEC has not yet approved a spot XRP ETF on any US exchange. Canada effectively exported its finished product to a market still waiting for the build.

What US traders are actually getting

An options contract gives the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell at a set price before a specific date. Buying a call option on the Evolve XRP ETF lets a US investor bet that XRP's price will rise without holding the token directly.

Selling a put lets them collect a premium if the price stays flat. This matters because options are the language institutions speak. A pension fund or asset manager that would never open a Coinbase account will use listed options on a regulated exchange.

They get price exposure, leverage if they want it, and the whole thing sits inside their existing compliance framework. The Canadian contracts join options on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana ETFs that already have US clearance.

That puts XRP in the same tier as the three largest crypto assets by market cap for the first time in a derivatives context. The question now is whether US exchanges will list their own XRP ETF options before Canada captures the bulk of that institutional demand.