SEC opened Nasdaq ISE options path for multi-asset crypto trusts

The Federal Register on March 27, 2026, published the Securities and Exchange Commission’s approval of Nasdaq ISE rules allowing options on qualifying commodity-based trusts that hold multiple crypto assets. The SEC issued the order on March 24; March 27 was the date the final approval entered the Federal Register’s public record.

The change created a generic route for Nasdaq ISE to list those options without returning to the SEC for a separate approval each time, once the underlying trust and every asset in it met the rule’s conditions. It was a market-structure decision, not approval of a named fund, token or options contract.

What the SEC approved

Before the change, ISE’s relevant generic criteria covered options on commodity-based trusts holding a single crypto asset. The approved amendment extended that framework to trusts holding more than one crypto asset.

Each asset in a qualifying trust must have had an average daily market value of at least $700 million over the preceding 12 months. Nasdaq said market value would be calculated from total issued supply multiplied by the asset’s price; unissued units were excluded. Each asset also had to underlie a derivatives contract trading on a market covered by a comprehensive surveillance-sharing agreement, directly or through common membership in the Intermarket Surveillance Group.

The underlying trust shares still had to satisfy Nasdaq’s generic listing rules, trade on a national securities exchange and qualify as an NMS stock. The options also remained subject to ordinary ETF-option requirements covering matters including expirations, strike prices, minimum increments, margin, customer accounts, position and exercise limits, and trading halts.

Those constraints matter because the order did not open ISE to options on every crypto basket. A small or thinly traded component could prevent an otherwise large product from qualifying, and the derivatives-and-surveillance test imposed a second screen independent of market value.

A faster path, with continuing checks

The SEC said the framework could let ISE list eligible options soon after Nasdaq listed the underlying trust shares. That removed one product-by-product regulatory step and could give investors and market makers another instrument for gaining or hedging exposure to a basket represented by trust shares.

The approval did not eliminate continuing oversight. ISE could suspend opening transactions if any component no longer maintained the $700 million 12-month average, measured monthly, or no longer satisfied the derivatives surveillance condition. Existing ETF-option surveillance procedures would apply. The SEC found the amended rule consistent with Exchange Act requirements concerning manipulation prevention, open markets and investor protection.

No event-day evidence established that a specific multi-asset trust option began trading on March 27. The development was permission and listing architecture; actual availability still depended on an eligible underlying product, exchange implementation and satisfaction of the remaining standards.

Market context on March 27

The structural approval arrived during a weak crypto session, but the cited records do not establish that the rule caused the move. Dow Jones Market Data reported the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index at $66,009.32 at 4 p.m. Eastern on March 27, down $2,462.93, or 3.60%, from its prior 4 p.m. reading. It was a point-in-time index comparison, not a universal bitcoin close: crypto trades continuously across venues.

That contrast is the institutional significance of the date. Spot prices were reacting to immediate risk conditions, while the SEC and ISE were building a longer-lived derivatives pathway around regulated trust shares. The order expanded the tools that could eventually support hedging and price discovery, without guaranteeing liquidity, adoption or a particular market outcome.