Solana ETF Proposal Aims to Be First in North America

With spot exchange-trade funds (ETFs) for Bitcoin solidly established in the U.S. and spot Ethereum ETFs imminent following initial approval late last month, a new proposal for a Solana ETF in Canada emerged on Thursday.

Canadian investment fund manager 3iQ announced that it has filed to offer The Solana Fund (QSOL), which it said—if approved—“would be the first Solana exchange-traded product to be listed in North America.”

With a market cap of $61 billion as of this writing, Solana (SOL) is the fifth-largest cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), the dollar-pegged Tether (USDT), and Binance Coin (BNB)

3iQ says the fund will be offered on the Toronto Stock Exchange “in relation to an initial public offering.”

“The Solana Fund offers easy exposure to SOL without technical complexity,” the company wrote. “As part of our investment strategy, the Solana Fund will stake SOL to earn rewards.”

The company already offers ETFs based on Bitcoin and Ethereum, but its move to support Solana adds weight to speculation over which cryptocurrencies U.S. regulators will approve next for such funds.

British bank Standard Chartered has predicted Solana and XRP would be the next coins to get a green light for the ETF treatment from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

“In several cases the core technology is so similar to ETH it would be difficult for the SEC to claim they were securities given the ETH position,” wrote Geoffrey Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s head of crypto research.

Tether and WAX co-founder William Quigley agreed, recently telling Decrypt that fund managers will inevitably move to the “next hot new thing” with Solana as a likely option.

“Every time Wall Street packages a new product to sell to consumers, if that product is successful, you can guarantee there will be copycats,” he said, pointing to the massive investments flowing into Bitcoin spot ETFs. ”We will continue to see new ETFs launching until there's a big pullback.”

“Canada had spot Bitcoin and spot Ethereum ETFs before the U.S. even got futures ETFs for either asset,” observed Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart on Twitter. He also pointed out that Solana funds are nothing new globally.

“You guys would be stunned to realize we already have over $1 billion in Solana ETPs elsewhere in the world,” he tweeted, including a list of funds from providers like 21Shares, VanEck, and WisdomTree.

In the U.S., attention is largely focused on the launch of spot Ethereum ETFs, which were unexpectedly approved by the SEC last month. Bitwise debuted a television ad touting Ethereum earlier today, with analysts predicting the funds will go live on July 2.

Edited by Andrew Hayward