Bitwise is shutting down its Dogecoin ETF before the fund even reaches its first birthday. BWOW, which began trading in November 2025, is scheduled to stop trading on October 14, 2026, bringing a surprisingly quick end to one of the most closely watched attempts to package Dogecoin for traditional investors.
The fund had about $722,000 in assets this month, according to Bitwise. Its closure comes as crypto issuers continue experimenting with exchange-traded products built around tokens far beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Bitwise told investors that BWOW will be liquidated as part of an effort to “optimize its product range to meet evolving investor needs.” The firm did not identify the fund’s relatively small asset base as the reason for the decision.
The Dogecoin ETF experiment ends early
For shareholders who remain in the fund, the mechanics are straightforward. October 14 is expected to be BWOW’s final trading day on NYSE Arca. On October 22, investors will receive the net asset value of their shares as of October 21 in cash.
Bitwise said shareholders do not need to take any action during the liquidation.
The fund currently holds around 8.2 million DOGE, worth approximately $688,000, according to its website. That means most of BWOW’s assets are tied directly to the cryptocurrency it was created to track.
The concept behind the Dogecoin ETF was simple enough: give investors exposure to DOGE through a brokerage account without requiring them to purchase, store or manage the cryptocurrency themselves. Like other ETFs, BWOW wrapped the underlying asset into a tradable market product.
That proposition arrived during a burst of interest in crypto funds tied to individual tokens. Bitwise was among several firms pushing beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum, with Grayscale also launching Dogecoin and XRP products around the same period.
Bitwise had been laying the groundwork for its Dogecoin fund well before its debut. The company registered a Dogecoin ETF entity in Delaware in January 2025. By November, it removed a delaying amendment from its SEC registration statement, allowing the filing to become effective after 20 days unless regulators intervened.
BWOW ultimately began trading on November 26, 2025. Less than 11 months later, its life as a public market product is set to be over.
At launch, Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley argued that Dogecoin’s unusually durable online community made the fund worth bringing to market. “Bitwise is launching BWOW because many DOGE holders, a community that numbers in the millions, want the benefit that comes from getting exposure to crypto in an ETP format, and we believe they should have it,” Horsley said at the time.
The closure offers a quieter counterpoint to the rush of crypto ETF launches. Getting a token into a brokerage account may make access easier, but it does not guarantee enough investor demand to keep a fund viable.
For Dogecoin, the experiment lasted only months. The meme-born cryptocurrency will remain available directly on the market, but Bitwise’s Dogecoin ETF will soon disappear from the exchange where investors could access it through a conventional brokerage account.