The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has approved a rule change allowing Cboe to list six leveraged funds from Volatility Shares, including products targeting three times the daily performance of Bitcoin and Ethereum futures. The approval, issued on October 2, also covers funds linked to gold, silver, crude oil and natural gas. According to Decrypt, the decision opens the way for the products to trade on Cboe’s BZX Exchange, although no launch date has been set.
The funds are designed to seek three times the daily price move of futures contracts tied to their respective assets. If Bitcoin futures rise 2% during a single trading day, the Bitcoin fund would target a 6% gain before fees and other effects. If the futures fall 2%, the fund would target a 6% loss. The same daily objective applies to the other five products.
The approval does not mean the funds can begin trading immediately. Cboe’s filing says each fund must first have its registration statement take effect. The SEC order did not specify when that will happen.
How the leveraged funds work
An exchange-traded fund, or ETF, is an investment vehicle whose shares trade on an exchange in a similar way to a company’s stock. A leveraged ETF uses financial instruments such as futures and borrowing-related structures to magnify the daily movement of an underlying asset.
The Volatility Shares products will mainly obtain exposure through futures contracts. These are agreements connected to buying or selling an asset at a specified price at a later date. Rather than promising three times an asset’s performance over an entire holding period, the funds reset their target each day.
That daily reset can produce results that differ significantly from three times the asset’s return over several days. For example, suppose Bitcoin futures fall 10% on the first day and rise 10% on the next. The futures price would be down 1% across the two-day period. A fund targeting three times the daily move would instead lose 30% on the first day and gain 30% on the remaining value on the second day. An initial $100 would fall to $70, then rise by $21 to $91, leaving a 9% loss.
The SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, have warned investors that leveraged products can behave differently from their stated daily target when held for longer than one session. The impact of daily compounding becomes especially important when markets move sharply in both directions.
Approval follows debate over leverage
Cboe needed the SEC’s individual approval because its fast-track listing rules for commodity funds exclude products seeking a multiple of an asset’s return. Aside from the three-times objective, the six funds must satisfy Cboe’s other listing requirements.
The SEC’s order points to existing investor-protection measures. Brokers are required to act in a retail customer’s best interest under Regulation Best Interest, while FINRA imposes additional sales and margin requirements for leveraged products.
The decision also follows a period of regulatory caution around increasingly leveraged exchange-traded products. Volatility Shares launched the first leveraged U.S. crypto ETF in 2023, a fund linked to Bitcoin futures. Spot Bitcoin ETFs, which hold Bitcoin directly rather than using futures, began arriving in January 2024 after years of rejected applications.
Competition for higher-leverage products intensified in 2025. In October of that year, Defiance filed for 49 funds offering three-times long and short exposure, while Volatility Shares filed for five-times products. In December 2025, the SEC halted its review of products offering more than two-times exposure and sent warning letters to nine issuers, including ProShares. In March 2026, the agency asked issuers to avoid five-times products.
Volatility Shares continued to introduce two-times funds. In April 2026, it launched products tied to Cardano, Stellar and Chainlink, adding to existing two-times funds linked to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and XRP.
Three-times products are not entirely new to the market. The SEC order says earlier three-times funds tied to silver, crude oil and natural gas from other issuers have since left the market, while a three-times gold product from another issuer remains available.
Current crypto market picture
Moneyiar market data at 10:34 a.m. on October 7, 2026, showed Bitcoin at $83,734.22571783, down 2.69% over 24 hours and down 0.13% over seven days. Ethereum stood at $2,579.5174983733, down 4.94% in 24 hours and 4.32% over seven days.
Other assets tracked by Moneyiar were also lower: Shiba Inu was priced at $0.0000054903, down 6.80% over 24 hours and 5.55% over seven days, while Uniswap was at $8.024763793, down 10.04% over 24 hours and 9.32% over seven days.
The market figures illustrate why the daily-reset feature matters for investors assessing leveraged products: a larger daily move in either direction produces a correspondingly larger targeted move, while repeated volatility can make longer-term results diverge from the headline three-times multiple.
