21Shares Switches XRP ETF to FTSE Pricing in Five-Fund Overhaul

Five 21Shares crypto exchange-traded funds, including the XRP altcoin product, will start pricing their shares off FTSE Russell indices on Thursday, August 27, replacing CF Benchmarks rates that expire for the funds on August 31. The transition follows 21Shares' decision to end its CF Benchmarks license and was confirmed in a batch of SEC filings published this week; the official 8-K filing shows the new benchmark, the amended fund names and a revised fee schedule across all five trusts. The revisions, each disclosed in a separate 8-K per trust, change how the funds are valued, how the Ethereum and Polkadot products are labeled, and when sponsor fees are collected. Holders keep the same shares, but the products start operating under different rules on Thursday. The benchmark choice is consequential because the index determines each fund's daily net asset value, and market makers rely on that NAV to keep secondary-market prices in line with the underlying tokens — so the switch makes its way onto the statement of every XRP ETF holder. It also separates 21Shares from the rest of the industry: CF Benchmarks' CME-branded rates still anchor BlackRock's IBIT Bitcoin fund and its staked Ether product ETHB, meaning the five funds are abandoning the benchmark used by the sector's largest issuers. FTSE Russell — the unit of London Stock Exchange Group that also backs the Russell 2000 — becomes the single pricing source for the Bitcoin (ARKB), Ethereum, XRP, Dogecoin and Polkadot funds, giving the group a valuation feed outside the CME ecosystem. The filings were posted on EDGAR ahead of the Thursday effective date, bundling all three structural revisions — valuation, naming and fee timing — into one disclosure round. Thursday's opening flows will show whether the benchmark overhaul shifts demand across the five products, and whether the changes draw new money into the XRP trust specifically.

The pricing change is one of three corporate actions hitting the lineup this week. On August 25, 21Shares renamed two funds in Delaware: the Ethereum ETF became the 21Shares Ethereum Staking ETF, and the Polkadot fund became the 21Shares Polkadot Staking ETF. The XRP and Dogecoin altcoin funds kept their tickers, as did ARKB, the Bitcoin fund co-run with ARK Invest. 21Shares has been staking the Ethereum fund's Ether since earlier this year and already publishes a distribution schedule, so the rename writes yield into the product's legal name without altering its mechanics. The label matters because the staking race is crowding fast: BlackRock launched a separate staked Ether fund, ETHB, on February 18 — its original spot fund ETHA still does not stake — while Fidelity filed on August 10 to stake the Ether backing its FETH fund and pay out quarterly cash dividends, with investors keeping 85% of rewards and the remainder going to fees, a structure set out in Fidelity's SEC filing. The appetite is visible among large holders: Italy's largest bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, trimmed its Bitcoin fund position by 94% over the last quarter while roughly tripling its staked-Ether exposure, and recent flow data shows buyers favoring yield over price, a rotation that has widened the gap between staked and non-staked products. The third change affects fees across all five funds, including the XRP product: sponsor fees will now be collected at least once per quarter rather than weekly, with the deduction made directly from each trust's coin holdings, from Bitcoin to DOT. One caution sits next to the new names — withdrawing staked Ether can take weeks in a congested exit queue, a timing risk that has been raised around Morgan Stanley's Ethereum ETP. For the XRP fund, the net effect of the three revisions is concentrated in the benchmark and fee timing, since its name and staking status are unchanged.

XRP traded near $1.4036, down 2.92%, while COINOTAG's proprietary 42-indicator composite S/R scoring engine rates the $1.4105 resistance at 90/100 — a reading built on pivot-point, value-area-high, Keltner-upper and volume-node confluence. A break above it opens $1.4817 and $1.5664; a rejection targets the strongest support at $1.3756 (83/100, from Fibo 0.500 and both Ichimoku lines). A daily close below $1.3756 would invalidate the near-term bull case and open a bear-market extension toward $1.2953. Derivatives data urges caution — funding at 0.0055%, open interest near $1.01 billion, and a 2.88 long/short ratio with 74.2% of accounts long — a setup prone to long squeezes. The Fear & Greed Index at 71 and RSI at 69.51 confirm stretched sentiment, with XRP far from all-time-high territory and the technical debate anchored on near-term levels.