Canary Capital submitted an application to establish an INJ staking ETF in America.

Canary Capital investment company has just submitted an S-1 registration form to the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States (SEC) on Thursday, aiming to launch an exchange-traded fund (ETF) staking INJ – the native token of the Injective blockchain network.

INJ is the governance, staking, and utility token of Injective Protocol, a layer 1 blockchain specifically designed for decentralized finance activities (DeFi).

According to the filings submitted to the SEC, the main objective of the fund is to accumulate staking rewards by providing transaction validation services (validator) through an approved staking platform.

Previously, Canary Capital established a trust fund in Delaware for the Injective staking ETF product in June, revealing plans to expand into altcoin investment. This filing marks another step forward in the trend of altcoin ETFs emerging in the U.S.

TradFi and DeFi are converging

The registration form also shows an increasingly clear intersection between traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi) — a strong increasing trend after the SEC issued guidance viewing staking rewards as income, rather than capital gains taxable securities transactions. This facilitates asset managers participating in delegated staking as a legitimate validator.

According to Ms. Nelli Zaltsman, head of the blockchain payment innovation department at Kinexys – a real asset tokenization platform backed by JPMorgan – the lines between DeFi and TradFi may disappear within the next few years.

At the RWA Summit 2025 in Cannes (France), she emphasized that the convergence between digital and traditional finance is opening up new opportunities for individual investors to access asset classes that were previously reserved for professional investors, including private equity funds.

Mr. Christopher Perkins, Chairman of CoinFund, shared with Cointelegraph that this trend will blur the lines between retail investors and accredited investors, while also promoting a broader wave of acceptance for digital assets.

However, not everyone in the cryptocurrency community agrees with this bright outlook. Some investors are concerned that the deep involvement of financial institutions and ETFs in the market may go against the original spirit of crypto.

Investor Nick Rose wrote on social media X: "Institutions and ETFs are not good for crypto. Everyone cheers when the money flows in as if it's free money, but Wall Street does not HODL – they hedge, rotate portfolios, and sell off when the risk model signals retreat."

He added: "Organizations only care about risk management, locking in profits, rebalancing portfolios... but crypto was not created for quarterly financial reports."

Thạch Sanh