BlackRock CEO Larry Fink
Brendan McDermid/Reuters
A fake filing for a spot XRP ETF from BlackRock sent the token soaring late in the day on Monday.
The filing showed up on the website that registers investment trusts in Delaware, but BlackRock didn’t file it.
XRP spiked as much as 13% before falling back down.
The cryptocurrency XRP rallied as much as 13% late in the day on Monday before paring those gains after a fake filing for a spot XRP ETF surfaced.
The filing had named BlackRock on Delaware’s Division of Corporations, even though BlackRock had not submitted the filing, Bloomberg first reported.
XRP was up slightly on Tuesday morning, trading around $0.66.
The fake filing comes several weeks after a similar event drove the price of bitcoin up. Last month, a report incorrectly stated that the Securities and Exchange Commission had approved BlackRock’s application for a spot bitcoin ETF. The crypto spiked briefly before coming back down.
Though the XRP filing was fake, the brief rally is unsurprising as optimism has been building in recent months over the possibility that the US could see its first spot crypto ETF. BlackRock last week registered for a spot ether ETF and is among many firms in line waiting for approval of the first spot bitcoin ETF.
Other Wall Street mainstays including Fidelity have applied for SEC approval on related products, and several high-profile investors like Michael Saylor and Mike Novogratz remain bullish that the US will get a spot crypto ETF this year.
Cryptocurrencies have had banner year, with bitcoin and ether, the largest tokens by market cap, gaining 120% and 70% respectively year-to-date.
Digital asset funds, too, have seen massive inflows, according to CoinShares. Crypto investment products added $293 million last week, pushing the total for the year above $1 billion — good for the third-highest annual inflow on record.