The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved a Cboe BZX Exchange rule change on Oct. 2 that clears the exchange to list six triple-leveraged products from Volatility Shares, among them a 3x Bitcoin ETF and a 3x Ether ETF.
The remaining four aim for three times the daily move in gold, silver, crude oil and natural gas. All six belong to the VS Trust, which Volatility Shares sponsors and manages.
“Looks like SEC just approved a 3x Bitcoin ETP as well as 3x Ether, Gold, Silver, Oil, Nat Gas under 33 Act. Wow. Big win for VolatilityShares,” Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas wrote on X on Friday evening.
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Why Cboe Needed a Rule Change
The funds carry “ETF” in their names, but the SEC order classifies them as commodity-based trust shares. Their shares are registered under the Securities Act of 1933, and they fall outside the Investment Company Act of 1940 that governs conventional ETFs.
Cboe already has generic listing standards that let commodity trusts list without a separate filing. Those standards shut out any product that targets a multiple or an inverse of a benchmark, so Cboe had to submit a standalone rule change, which it filed on Aug. 10. The SEC received no public comments, and its Division of Trading and Markets approved the proposal under delegated authority.
Each fund will hold first- and second-month futures contracts on its commodity, with cash and cash equivalents posted as collateral. The order does not set a launch date.
The 2x Limit for 1940 Act Funds
The trust structure matters because of how the SEC has handled triple leverage in 1940 Act funds. In a Dec. 2, 2025 letter to Direxion, staff in the SEC’s Division of Investment Management said they would not substantively review Direxion’s filings for funds seeking more than 200% leveraged exposure until the firm resolved concerns under Rule 18f-4, which caps a fund’s value-at-risk at twice that of an unleveraged reference portfolio. Direxion’s flagged filings included proposed 3x bitcoin and ether funds.
Volatility Shares already offers 2x bitcoin and ether products under the tickers BITX and ETHU, which the order lists among leveraged products trading on U.S. exchanges today. The order also notes that broker-dealers recommending the new funds remain bound by Regulation Best Interest and by FINRA’s stricter sales-practice and margin requirements for leveraged securities.
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