Picture this: earning passive income while you sleep, just by holding cryptocurrency in your brokerage account. This possibility moved closer to reality this week when two investment firms asked U.S. federal regulators to give go ahead to a fund that pays an investor for doing nothing, basically.
REX Shares and Osprey Funds just filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) seeking approval for an exchange-traded fund that buys BNB tokens and generates returns through “staking”. The proposed fund promises annual returns between 1.5-3% simply for holding BNB, Binance’s native cryptocurrency.
The setup is pretty straightforward. The ETF will put at least 80% of its cash directly into BNB, with the leftover 20% going towards other exchange-traded products that give more BNB exposure. It is a spread-out bet within the Binance world, meant to get returns while keeping risks in check.
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Fixing Crypto’s Biggest Headache
Regular crypto staking has one massive drawback: an investor cannot get his money immediately, when required. With BNB, initiating unstaking triggers a 7-day “unbonding” period, which is a mandatory wait before your tokens become transferable or cashable, during which rewards also pause. For investors who are used to pulling money out whenever they want, this has been a total dealbreaker.
REX and Osprey say they have figured a way out. Their fund will cap illiquid assets at 15% of everything they hold, so investors can actually redeem shares for cash when they need to. They are planning to stay flexible using liquid staking tokens and other assets that can be traded without waiting a week to get the cash back for an investor.
Anchorage Digital Bank will be handling the custody side of this project, delivering bank-level security to ease fears of crypto hacks or funds vanishing.
Racing for Billions
REX Shares and Osprey Funds are not venturing into the territory alone for their BNB-focused ETF. In May 2025, VanEck, the veteran asset manager overseeing billions in crypto and traditional ETFs, submitted its proposal for a spot BNB exchange-traded fund—marking the first such bid in the U.S. market. Now, with REX-Osprey joining the fray, a competitive sprint is underway to unlock what both teams view as massive, bottled-up investor appetite for regulated access to BNB.
The timing also seems right. Bitcoin ETFs have been hoovering up anywhere from $3.6 billion to $6 billion during their best months this year, though some months saw cash heading for the exits instead.
Big Money’s Already Piling In
Major institutions are not sitting idle on BNB either. BNB Network Company (formerly CEA Industries) raised $500 million in a private placement to build a massive BNB treasury, cementing its status as the largest corporate holder with over 500,000 tokens. Windtree Therapeutics secured up to $520 million in funding facilities to amass a BNB treasure, channeling 99% of proceeds into the token as part of its biotech diversification play. Meanwhile, Nano Labs kicked off its $1 billion BNB accumulation strategy with a $50 million purchase, eyeing a stake of up to 10% of the circulating supply.
This corporate shopping spree shows how dramatically the thinking’s changed around cryptocurrency. Deep-pocketed investors are not treating established tokens like BNB as pure gambling chips anymore. These digital assets are starting to look like actual income producers, just like dividend stocks or bonds that pay interest.
Opening Doors for Regular Folks
The REX-Osprey ETF would hand regular investors access to institutional-grade crypto setups. Right now, only rich people (termed the “accredited investor” club) can easily buy BNB with staking rewards through fancy private funds. The new ETF would open the doors wide through regular brokerage accounts on a major exchange.
There’s a hitch though, and it’s not small. The 1.5-3% annual staking rewards sound appealing on paper, especially as part of an ETF. But BNB’s price can bounce around like a pinball, with recent 30-day volatility hitting 6-9%. Sharp swings can easily diminish those gains or multiply them. For instance, BNB jumped 2.5% right after the REX-Osprey ETF filing news came out.
Still, this filing is bigger than just another investment product. It is a signal that Wall Street’s actually embracing these decentralized finance yield tricks, which could blow the gates off for institutional money flooding into crypto. Whether the SEC gives it a thumbs up or not is yet to be seen, but just filing shows how far crypto’s travelled from its sketchy early days.
