SEC approves Cboe listing rules for 3x Bitcoin and Ether futures products from VS Trust

Serguey Asael Shinder05 October 2026, 07:182 min read

The US Securities and Exchange Commission on 2 October approved the Cboe BZX exchange's proposal to list VS Trust's 3x Bitcoin ETF and 3x Ether ETF, CryptoSlate reported. The products are sponsored by Volatility Shares and aim for three times the daily return of their benchmarks.

What the order covers. The approval concerns the exchange's listing rule for six products, including leveraged products tied to gold, silver, crude oil and natural gas. Cboe's generic standards for commodity trusts exclude products that seek a multiple of a benchmark, so these needed individual approval. The order classifies them as exchange-traded products structured as commodity-based trust shares, which do not carry the investor protections of funds registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940, despite "ETF" in their names.

What it does not do. An exchange rule approval is not registration. VS Trust's preliminary prospectus of 17 August lists the proposed tickers BITH and ETHK and states that the securities cannot be sold until the registration becomes effective. As of 4 October, CryptoSlate said, neither effectiveness nor a first trading date had been confirmed.

How the products work. Each seeks three times its benchmark's daily performance before fees, where the benchmarks are portfolios of first- and second-month futures contracts rather than spot prices. The funds rebalance daily, so returns over longer periods compound from a changing base and can differ from three times the underlying move in size and even in direction. The SEC's own investor bulletin warns that daily leveraged products can depart substantially from their stated multiple over weeks or months, particularly in volatile markets.

What it means

The decision widens the regulated menu for short-term leveraged crypto exposure, but it is a step in a process, not a launch. For investors the important facts are structural: futures-based, reset daily, outside the 1940 Act. For the market, approval by individual order shows the SEC is still handling leveraged crypto products one at a time rather than through generic listing standards.