VanEck files for Solana ETF SOL rises 8%

Author: Oliver Knight, Helene Braun, CoinDesk; Translator: Baishui, Golden Finance

Asset management company VanEck applied to sell the Solana (SOL) exchange-traded fund (ETF), the first such registration in the United States and just six days after 3iQ applied for a similar product in Canada.

The S-1 registration form filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) helped boost the SOL token's 24-hour gains to nearly 8%. The CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20), which measures the broader crypto market, rose 1.8%.

VanEck is well known to be a pioneer in the field. The asset manager was the first to file for a spot Ethereum (ETH) ETF in 2021, about three years after the SEC began reaching out to issuers, including BlackRock, Fidelity, Ark Invest and others. Another filing was made last September. Matthew Sigel, VanEck’s head of digital asset research, wrote in an article on X: “We believe the native token SOL functions similarly to other digital commodities such as Bitcoin and ETH.” He considers SOL a commodity, not a security. “It is used to pay for transaction fees and computing services on the blockchain,” he wrote. Sigel added that VanEck filed for the Solana ETF because the blockchain is a competitor to Ethereum with a “unique combination of scalability, speed and low cost.”

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved the first spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETF in January, and an Ethereum ETF also appears to be on the horizon. Analysts predict that the ETH ETF will attract $5 billion in net inflows in the first five months.

Several experts said that if the ETH ETF is approved, the next token to be packaged into such a fund will be SOL, as its similarities to the second-largest cryptocurrency classify it as a commodity. However, they said that serious discussions around such products will not begin until 2025.Geoffrey Kendric, an analyst at Standard Chartered Bank, sees Ripple's XRP as a possible option.

“[My] initial thinking is that a launch would only be possible sometime in 2025 if there is a new administration in the White House and at the SEC,” Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst James Seyffart wrote in a post on X. “And even then, there’s no guarantee.”