Invest1 publisher3 min readPublished Updated
XRP's weight more than doubles in Grayscale's Next Gen model compared to its Leaders portfolio
Grayscale's bitcoin-free Next Gen model holds 26.11% in its XRP fund against 11.92% in the bitcoin-holding Leaders model, and the same allocation sheet puts the ether fund at 42.34% inside a suite described as capping any single asset at 40%.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Grayscale announced a suite of four crypto model portfolios for financial advisors on September 14, named Core Plus, Leaders, Next Gen and Infrastructure.
- The bitcoin-free Next Gen model gives the Grayscale XRP Trust ETF 26.11%, second to the Grayscale Ethereum Staking Mini ETF at 42.34% on an allocation sheet dated August 31.
- In the Digital Assets Leaders model, which tracks the five largest eligible assets, ether sits at 38.57% and bitcoin at 37.25%, leaving XRP third at 11.92%.
Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- contradiction The published sheet shows the ether fund 2.34 points above the 40% cap, leaving an advisor to guess whether the cap binds continuously or only at the quarterly reset.
- capability A platform can now put a crypto sleeve on an advisor's menu in which XRP arrives at a quarter of the money without anyone making an XRP-specific decision.
- constraint The weights come from market cap and reset every quarter.
- precedent Any token that qualifies for the ten-asset eligible universe on market cap can reach advisor accounts through this channel on that basis alone.
Ether outweighs XRP by 3.24 times in the Leaders model and by 1.62 times in Next Gen [1][2]. Taking bitcoin out of a market-cap-weighted universe scales up everything below it in proportion, which would leave that ratio untouched; the ratio instead falls by roughly half.
Most of XRP's higher weight comes from the 40% cap on ether. Strip bitcoin's 37.25% out of Leaders and rescale the four survivors, and ether goes to 61.5% with XRP at 19.0%. Hold ether at the cap and split the remaining 60 points among the other three in proportion, and XRP lands near 29.6% [11]. Next Gen's three extra positions, Chainlink, Avalanche and Sui, together 4.70%, pull it back toward the 26.11% on the sheet [7][12]. That is 2.19 times XRP's weight in the model that holds bitcoin [3].
On the cap, the published sheet contradicts the announcement. Grayscale describes all four strategies as market cap-weighted, rebalanced quarterly and capped at 40% for any single asset [2]. The allocation sheet dated Aug. 31 shows the Grayscale Ethereum Staking Mini ETF at 42.34%, 2.34 points over [6][10]. Grayscale's announcement does not address the gap. A quarterly reset lets a winner drift past its cap between rebalances.
The rest of the sheet reconciles cleanly. XRP alone is the 26.11% "Currencies" slice, and the 65.47% in smart-contract platforms is ether, solana, avalanche and sui added together [9][5]; the residual 8.42% is Hyperliquid's 5.76% and Chainlink's 2.66% [6]. Seven positions sum to 100.00% in a strategy that can hold up to ten [7][8].
"Advisors are increasingly looking for ways to bring digital assets into client portfolios without having to build and maintain allocations asset by asset," said Laurie Katz, Grayscale's Global Head of Distribution [5]. Grayscale sends the models to financial platforms, which make them available to advisors, and advisors keep full discretion over whether and how they use the suggested weights [3][4]. The firm did not disclose how much money follows the models or which platforms carry them, and the Aug. 31 document reports Next Gen up 30.69% since inception with nothing longer-dated [10].
Until there is an asset figure, 26.11% is a target on a distribution sheet. The demand evidence sits in the funds themselves. XRP ETFs took $12.29 million in a single early-September session while US bitcoin ETFs lost $120.24 million that day, with Grayscale's GXRP accounting for $2.98 million, or 24.2%, of the XRP inflow [12][13][8]. The whole XRP inflow was 10.2% of the bitcoin outflow [9].
I'd expect the channel to matter more than the weight, because a model on a platform menu buys on a schedule while a single fund on a shelf waits to be chosen. The counter-thesis comes from the same rule that produced the 26.11%. Market-cap weighting cuts XRP's share at the next reset if it lags the smart-contract funds beside it, and XRP is at $1.30, down 7.8% over a day and up 30.0% over 30 days [15].
What to watch
- Grayscale disclosing assets in the four models, or a named platform adding them to its advisor menu, which would convert a 26.11% target into measurable buying.
- The first quarterly rebalance: whether the ether fund is cut back to 40% and which positions absorb the 2.34 points.
- Whether XRP ETF inflows hold through the next bitcoin drawdown, as they did in November 2025 when the first US spot XRP ETF took $243 million on day one.