In a move that marks a significant milestone for the entire cryptocurrency industry, VanEck, one of the first issuers of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF) in the United States, has filed for a new ETF that would track the price of Solana (SOL).
The SOL price soared over 8% after the filing dropped.
SOL ETF Proposal Filed By VanEck
VanEck filed an S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on June 27 for its “VanEck Solana Trust”— marking the first Solana ETF to be filed in the U.S. six days after a similar product launched in Canada.
The proposal indicates that the investment vehicle will be an “exchange-traded fund” designed to “reflect the performance of the price of Solana” by backing the Trust’s shares directly with SOL tokens.
If approved, the VanEck Solana Trust would list on the Cboe BZX Exchange and would “hold SOL and will value its shares daily based on the reported MarketVectorTM Solana Benchmark Rate.”
“Neither the Trust nor the Sponsor… will engage in any action where any portion of the Trust’s SOL is used to earn staking rewards, to earn additional SOL, or to generate income or other earnings,” the S1 registration form clarified.
“I am excited to announce that VanEck just filed for the FIRST Solana exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the US,” Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck, opined in a post on Thursday.
The SEC approved the first spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETF in mid-Janaury, while an Ethereum (ETH) ETF appears to be on the horizon. Experts expect the ETH products to go live by next week.
Solana’s Utility As A Digital Commodity
After announcing the submission, Sigel explained the reasons behind the filing. He lauded Solana’s high throughput and even shared the asset management firm’s conviction that SOL is a commodity.
He added that SOL “functions similarly to other digital commodities such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. “It is utilized to pay for transaction fees and computational services on the blockchain. Like ether on the Ethereum network, SOL can be traded on digital asset platforms or used in peer-to-peer transactions.”
Furthermore, the VanEck executive describes Solana as decentralized, considering that the transaction validation and recordkeeping infrastructure are jointly maintained by multiple independent validators distributed across the globe.
“SOL’s decentralized nature, high utility, and economic feasibility align with the characteristics of other established digital commodities, reinforcing our belief that SOL may be a valuable commodity with use cases for investors, builders, and entrepreneurs looking for alternatives to the duopoly app stores.”
Following the news, the price of SOL surged from around $139.1 to $150.33, marking an 8.2% spike over the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. The coin’s market cap stood at $69.46 billion as of press time.
The SEC infamously called SOL a security when it lodged charges against crypto exchanges Coinbase and Binance last year. It remains to be seen how the securities regulator will receive this new Solana ETF filing and whether other asset managers, including BlackRock and Fidelity, will follow in VanEck’s footsteps and submit their applications.
