Bitwise’s BWOW dogecoin ETF will close after 10 months, adding to weak demand across DOGE funds and raising a harder question for altcoin ETFs: What problem are they actually solving?
- Three tracked U.S. dogecoin exchange-traded funds drew just over $12 million in nearly 10 months, less than the $12.29 million XRP funds attracted on Sept. 9 alone.
- Dogecoin funds recorded no net flows on 166 of 199 trading days and posted a roughly $108,000 net withdrawal from Aug. 13 through Sept. 10, even as dogecoin’s price rose sharply.
- Bitwise plans to close its BWOW Dogecoin ETF less than a year after its launch, underscoring how limited investor demand has made the fund economically unsustainable.
Dogecoin spent years becoming one of crypto’s easiest tokens to buy. But putting it in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) has done little to attract a new class of investors.
Data analyzed by CoinDesk shows that ETFs for another popular token, XRP, took in more money on Wednesday than three U.S. dogecoin funds have collected in nearly 10 months.
The XRP products added $12.29 million on Sept. 9, while cumulative net inflows into the tracked DOGE funds stood at just over $12 million through Sept. 10.
These funds let investors follow a cryptocurrency’s price through an ordinary brokerage account, without buying and storing the tokens themselves. Net inflows measure money entering the funds after withdrawals, offering a read on fresh demand.
The tracked XRP and DOGE funds began rolling out within weeks of each other last November. Both tokens have large retail followings among investors looking for crypto bets beyond bitcoin and ether.
Dogecoin’s results sit far behind those of other major tokens that have made the trip to Wall Street.
The tracked XRP funds have accumulated $1.7 billion in net inflows since going live in November 2025, while products following Solana’s SOL token have collected $1.36 billion since their launch in October 2025. Each tracked category has drawn more than 100 times the DOGE group’s total.
The weak demand is already thinning the field. Crypto asset manager Bitwise said Thursday it will shut its Dogecoin ETF, BWOW, less than a year after its November launch. The fund reported just $687,713 in assets as of Sept. 9, with trading expected to end Oct. 14 and remaining shareholders receiving cash on Oct. 22.
“Bitwise has determined to liquidate the fund as it continues to optimize its product range to meet evolving investor needs,” the firm’s spokesperson told CoinDesk.
Long stretches without fresh money
The analyzed data covers 199 trading days for the three Dogecoin funds. They recorded positive net inflows on just 28 of those days and net outflows on five.
On the other 166 days — more than 83% of the sample — combined net flows were zero.
The other 166 days recorded zero net flows. That means either no money entered or left the funds, or new investments were canceled out by withdrawals. For example, if investors put in $100,000 but others withdrew $100,000, the net flow would be zero.
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Twice, the group went 18 consecutive trading sessions without a reported net addition or withdrawal.
ETF shares can still trade between investors on a zero-flow day, as a buyer can purchase shares from an existing holder without the fund issuing new ones. Money entering one fund can also offset withdrawals from another, leaving the combined total unchanged.
But recent figures show how little capital DOGE products have attracted alongside their larger rivals. Over the 20 trading sessions from Aug. 13 through Sept. 10, XRP funds added $190.5 million and SOL funds brought in $199 million. The DOGE group recorded a net withdrawal of roughly $108,000.
Even a sharp rally failed to meaningfully change the pattern. Dogecoin rose more than 30% over the last two weeks of August. The funds took in about $800,000 across two of those sessions, and nothing on the other nine.
DOGE’s asset totals could easily obscure that weakness. The tracked funds grew from $10.15 million at the close before that period to $11.83 million, an increase of 16.5%, despite the net withdrawal.
A fund’s holdings can rise in value when the token appreciates, even without new investor money. Assets under management, therefore, tell a different story from flows: a bigger fund balance does not necessarily mean more buying.
As such, the flow records also reveal nothing about investors’ identities. They measure subscriptions and withdrawals across products available to both professional money managers and individuals, rather than focusing solely on institutional demand.
A reason to own DOGE
Bitwise’s original pitch leaned heavily on dogecoin’s existing following.
At launch, chief executive Hunter Horsley described it as “a 12-year-old coin based on a picture of a cute dog” and said its millions of holders deserved access through an exchange-traded product.
But that easier access addresses only a small part of the investment case, according to Jordan Jefferson, founder of MyDoge, a Dogecoin wallet app, and DogeOS, a project building applications around DOGE.
“Access has never been Dogecoin’s biggest constraint. DOGE already has deep liquidity and broad distribution, and a significant share of supply sits in large exchange and brokerage wallets,” Jefferson told CoinDesk.
Jefferson argued that broader institutional demand would depend on investors finding more to underwrite than price appreciation alone.
“At DogeOS, we’re seeing institutional interest in financial markets and applications built on DOGE, decentralized and on-chain,” he added. “As that economy develops, institutions have more to underwrite than price appreciation alone, and regulated products become more relevant as a way to express that thesis.”
Smoke, a pseudonymous representative of Own The Doge, the group holding the exclusive license to the original Doge meme image, told CoinDesk that the BWOW product sat “between two audiences but served neither.”
“It’s a verdict on selling $DOGE as if it were just another ticker,” he said, noting BWOW’s closure was simply a failure to find a market for the fund rather than a verdict on dogecoin.
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