Cardano ETP Guide 2026: Every European ADA ETN Compared

Short answer: Eight Cardano ETP lines from six issuers trade in Europe as of 23 September 2026, with annual fees from 0.00% (CoinShares CSDA, a temporary reduction) to 2.50% (21Shares AADA), and five of the eight pass on some staking yield. Together the lines with published figures hold only about $67m, a fraction of a single Solana product. UK retail investors cannot buy any of them: the London Stock Exchange admits only Bitcoin and Ether ETNs. ADA itself traded at $0.2369 with a market capitalisation of $8.89bn (rank 17) on 23 September 2026, according to CoinGecko, and there is still no US spot Cardano ETF after Grayscale withdrew its GADA filing on 7 August 2026.

Which Cardano ETPs are listed in Europe? #

All of these are exchange-traded notes: debt securities issued against ADA held with a custodian, not funds. If that distinction is new, start with what a crypto ETN is. Figures below come from issuer pages read on 23 September 2026 unless another date is shown.

Sources: product pages of 21Shares, CoinShares, WisdomTree (factsheet data to 31 August 2026), Virtune, Bitwise and Valour. CoinShares describes its zero fee as a reduction “until further notice”, so treat it as variable rather than permanent.

The cheapest and dearest lines differ by 2.5 percentage points a year for the same underlying, and the largest product, AADA, is also the most expensive. The category is small, so bid-ask spreads on the thinner lines can matter more than the fee. Our overview of crypto ETP issuers in Europe covers the issuers behind each row.

Which was the first Cardano ETP? #

21Shares. Its Cardano ETP listed on SIX Swiss Exchange on 26 April 2021, and the issuer’s launch release called it the “world’s first Cardano ADA ETP”. Valour’s SEK line followed on 18 May 2021 on NGM in Stockholm, making it the first Cardano ETP in the Nordics; it now trades on Spotlight Stock Market and is available through Avanza, Nordnet, Montrose and SAVR, according to Valour.

Which Cardano ETPs pay staking rewards? #

Cardano is a proof-of-stake network, and ADA delegated to a stake pool earns protocol rewards without being locked. That makes staking easier to pass through than on some other chains, and five of the eight lines do so in some form:

• 21Shares AADA stakes and accrues the reward daily to the product’s net asset value; the page does not publish a rate.
• CoinShares CSDA passes on 1.00% a year while charging no management fee. CoinShares keeps the rest of the protocol reward, so the zero fee is not the full cost.
• WisdomTree marks its product “Staking Enabled: Yes” in the factsheet without a published rate.
• Virtune VIRADA states that staking adds 1.3% a year.
• CoinShares COINADA (SEK) is a staked line.

Bitwise RDAN does not stake, and Valour does not state staking for its Cardano lines. When comparing, look at net return after fee and after the issuer’s share of staking, not at the headline fee alone.

Can UK investors buy a Cardano ETN? #

No, not as retail investors, as of September 2026. The FCA opened retail access to crypto ETNs from 8 October 2025, but only for notes “listed on our Official List and admitted to trading on a UK Recognised Investment Exchange”. The FCA rule does not itself name the underlying coins; the restriction comes from the London Stock Exchange, whose Crypto ETN Admission Factsheet will consider only a note that is physically backed and “has Bitcoin or Ethereum underlying cryptoassets”. The exchange reserves the right to expand that list, but has not.

On 6 November 2025 the LSE said 19 crypto ETNs, all “100% physically backed Bitcoin or Ethereum”, had been listed by nine issuers. Brokers mirror it: Trading 212 states that “only ETNs that reference Bitcoin or Ethereum and are listed on a UK Recognised Investment Exchange are available”, and Saxo UK offers ADA products to professional clients only. A SIX, Xetra or Stockholm listing of AADA, WADA or CSDA does not qualify.

The tax wrapper point is secondary but worth knowing. Since 6 April 2026, SI 2026/248 has moved crypto ETNs out of the Stocks and Shares ISA and into the Innovative Finance ISA only, with legacy holdings allowed to stay; SIPPs have been allowed to hold them since 8 October 2025. For Cardano this is academic until an ADA note is admitted to the LSE. The current UK list is tracked in crypto ETNs in the UK, and the ISA change in crypto ETNs and the ISA.

The only UK retail route to ADA today is buying the coin directly through a cryptoasset firm registered with the FCA for anti-money-laundering purposes. That registration is not FSMA authorisation, and the FCA Register warns such services are “unlikely to be protected” by the Financial Ombudsman or FSCS.

Where does ADA stand, and what is on the roadmap? #

At $0.2369 (€0.2082) on 23 September 2026, ADA had about 37.53bn coins in circulation out of a maximum supply of 45bn, per CoinGecko. The network’s upgrade path is the main thing ETP holders will read about in the coming months, so it helps to separate what is scheduled from what is hoped for:

• Last hard fork. “van Rossem” (protocol version 11) activated on 18 July 2026, according to cardano.org.
• Dijkstra (protocol version 12). Intersect’s weekly update of 11 September 2026 says node 11.2 is expected to carry the full Dijkstra feature set except Leios, and the DijkstraNet public testnet launches with it to test Plutus V4, nested transactions and CIP-50. Reported enactment windows, citing Intersect, are 5 December 2026 to 4 January 2027 at “moderate confidence” and 24 February to 26 March 2027 at “high confidence”. Neither is a fixed date.
• Ouroboros Leios. IOG’s treasury request of ₳27.7m aims to take Leios to “a mainnet-ready release candidate by late 2026”, with a planned throughput gain of 10 to 65 times. The Leios roadmap itself gives no dates. The Musashi testnet for Leios is live.
• Hydra and Midgard. IOG describes Hydra as “in production hardening” and targets a Midgard rollup testnet for Q3 or Q4 2026.

Two recent headlines also need precise wording. The Cardano Foundation, not the network as such, reportedly joined Mastercard’s Crypto Partner Program on 15 September 2026; Mastercard has not said it will settle on Cardano. And Cardano support in the TypeScript package of the x402 payments standard was merged on 9 September 2026 (pull request 2537 in the x402-foundation repository), while the Python implementation is still open.

What happened to the US Cardano ETF? #

Grayscale filed Form RW with the SEC on 7 August 2026 to withdraw the S-1 for its Cardano trust, which was to trade as GADA on NYSE Arca. The stated reason was that “the Sponsor does not intend to proceed with the planned distribution”; the filing confirms the registration was never declared effective and no shares were sold. Crypto.news reported on 15 August that other issuers, including Bitwise, Canary, VanEck and 21Shares, still have ADA filings in play and that ADA met the six-month futures threshold for generic listing standards on 9 August 2026. No US spot Cardano ETF was trading as of 23 September 2026. For European investors this changes little either way: US ETFs carry no PRIIPs key information document, so EU and UK retail brokers cannot sell them.

How are Cardano ETPs taxed? #

It depends on where you live, not on the product:

• UK: gains on a crypto ETN in a general account fall under capital gains tax at 18% or 24% above the £3,000 annual exempt amount for 2026/27 (gov.uk). HMRC treats directly received staking rewards as income; for an ETN where staking accrues inside the NAV, you realise it through the price. See our UK crypto ETN tax guide.
• Germany: under the BMF letter of 6 March 2025, a note with a delivery claim on the underlying ADA can follow the one-year holding rule of section 23 EStG; without one, the 25% flat tax plus surcharge applies. Check the product terms.
• Sweden and France: the SEK lines can sit in a Swedish ISK; in France crypto ETNs are not PEA-eligible and sit in a compte-titres ordinaire.

What are the risks? #

Price risk first: ADA is about 92% below its 2021 all-time high of $3.09, and an ETN tracks it one for one, minus fees. Structural risks follow. Every product here is a debt security, so the holder has a claim on the issuer, collateralised by ADA at a custodian, rather than direct ownership of coins. Small products can be closed or merged; several lines hold under $5m. A zero fee that is described as temporary can be raised. Staking adds operational risk at the issuer and custodian level. And roadmap headlines can move the price on testnet news that may take months to reach mainnet.

FAQ #

What is the cheapest Cardano ETP in Europe? CoinShares CSDA at 0.00% a year, a temporary reduction, with 1.00% staking passed on. WisdomTree’s WADA/ADAW charges 0.50% with staking enabled; 21Shares AADA is the most expensive at 2.50%.

Which Cardano ETP is the largest? 21Shares AADA with $30.26m on 23 September 2026, followed by Valour’s SEK line at $16.57m and CoinShares CSDA at $15.05m.

Can I buy a Cardano ETN in a UK ISA or SIPP? No. The London Stock Exchange only admits Bitcoin and Ether crypto ETNs for retail, so no ADA note is available to UK retail investors in any account type.

Are European Cardano ETPs physically backed? The issuers describe their products as physically backed or, in Valour’s case, fully hedged with ADA held at custodians such as Copper and Komainu. They remain debt securities with issuer risk.

Is there a Cardano ETF? Not in the US or Europe. Grayscale withdrew its GADA registration on 7 August 2026, and European Cardano products are ETNs rather than UCITS funds.

Not financial advice. Capital at risk.