Grayscale Built a Crypto Pie Without Bitcoin and XRP Ate the Second-Largest Slice 🥧

Grayscale gave financial advisors a ready-made crypto allocation on Monday, weighting XRP at 26.11% inside its new Digital Assets Next Gen model portfolio, the second-largest holding in that strategy. A model portfolio is a published recipe in which Grayscale selects the assets and weights, and advisors replicate that mix into client accounts using the firm's exchange-traded funds. Grayscale launched four Model Portfolios on September 14, 2026: Digital Assets Core Plus (broad exposure to $BTC, $ETH, $SOL, and $LINK), Digital Assets Leaders (the five largest eligible assets), Digital Assets Next Gen, and a fourth strategy built around a distinct investment objective.

The Next Gen portfolio excludes Bitcoin and held seven funds as of August 31, with Ether at 42.34%, XRP at 26.11%, and Solana at 21.09% — together filling roughly 89% of the basket. Hyperliquid, a trading-focused blockchain whose Grayscale fund listed only in June, takes 5.76%, while Chainlink, Avalanche, and Sui split the remainder. Grayscale caps any single asset at 40% and rebalances the weights every three months; Ether has already drifted past that cap since the model launched on July 27.

XRP trades near $1.42, up about 5% on the day and fifth by market capitalization, but the Grayscale XRP Trust ETF sits 38.51% below its launch price. BeInCrypto reported in August that the same trust sold $180 million in tokens during the first half of the year at a realized loss, and six of the model's seven funds trade below where they started. The model itself shows a 30.69% net gain since July 27 — five weeks of history built largely on one strong August, with the rest of the return table still empty.

"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, framing the launch around convenience. Grayscale charges no separate fee for the models, and the underlying funds average 0.23%. Whether advisors interpret the Next Gen lineup as exposure to emerging assets or as a concentrated Ether and XRP bet under a different label will shape how much client capital follows.