Bitwise Joins Mounting Race for Solana ETF

Crypto-investments firm Bitwise took a big jump Thursday toward offering a Solana exchange traded fund (ETF) in the United States.

Paperwork filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) makes Bitwise the fourth investments company vying to offer a Solana ETF, behind Canary Capital, which filed in October and VanEck and 21Shares which kicked off the race in June.

Donald Trump’s coming return to the White House has reset expectations for the crypto industry, making once far-off regulatory propositions more plausible. Current SEC Chair Gary Gensler is set to step down from the agency on Jan. 20, when Trump is sworn into office.

One of those propositions is that SOL — the fuel for transacting on Solana in much the same way that ETH is on Ethereum — could soon be wrapped in an ETF for easy trading by Wall Street investors.

Bitwise already offers a variety of ETFs tracking BTC and ETH, the two cryptoassets generally treated as commodities in the US. It also has shown a gambler’s propensity for filing ETF applications over more controversial assets, such as XRP and now SOL.

Solana is one of the stars of this year’s bull run as a hub for trading activity, especially among memecoin traders. Its SOL token is also knocking on the door of all-time highs not seen since late 2021, at the peak of the last great bull run.

Bitwise telegraphed its SOL ETF plans earlier this week with a corporate fining in Delaware. Chief Investments Officer Matt Hougan confirmed the filing’s legitimacy but declined to comment further.

The crypto-investments company markets heavily to registered investment advisers in the US. It reported $5 billion in assets under management last month.

Cboe, Bitwise’s exchange partner for the proposed product, published 19b-4 forms for all four applications on Thursday. Bitwise’s S-1 form, another necessary piece of paperwork for the launch of an ETF, had not been published at press time