With Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) firmly established in the US and looming Ethereum ETFs set to launch following initial approval late last month, a new proposal for a Solana ETF emerged on Thursday in Canada.
Canadian investment fund manager 3iQ announced that it has filed to offer the Solana Fund (QSOL), which it said “would be Solana’s first publicly traded product to be listed in North America.” “if approved.
With a market cap of $61 billion at the time of 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 connection with an initial public offering.”
“The Solana Fund offers simple 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 decision to support Solana adds weight to speculation about which cryptocurrencies US regulators will next approve for such funds.
British bank Standard Chartered has predicted that Solana and XRP would be the next coins to receive the green light for ETF treatment by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
“In several cases, the core technology is so similar to ETH that it would be difficult for the SEC to claim that they are securities given ETH’s position,” wrote Geoffrey Kendrick, head of cryptocurrency research at Standard Chartered.
William Quigley, co-founder of Tether and WAX, agreed, recently telling Decrypt that fund managers will inevitably move towards the “next big thing” and that Solana is a likely choice.
“Every time Wall Street packages a new product to sell to consumers, if that product is successful, you can guarantee there will be imitators,” he said, pointing to the huge investments flowing into spot Bitcoin ETFs. “We will continue to see new ETFs launching until there is a big correction.”
“Canada had spot Bitcoin and spot Ethereum ETFs before the US even got futures ETFs for either asset,” Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart noted on Twitter. He also indicated that Solana funds are nothing new globally.
“You would be surprised to realize that we already have over $1 billion in Solana ETPs in other parts of the world,” he tweeted, including a list of funds from providers such as 21Shares, VanEck and WisdomTree.
In the US, attention is largely focused on the launch of Ethereum spot ETFs, which were unexpectedly approved by the SEC last month. Today, Bitwise released a TV ad promoting Ethereum, with analysts predicting the funds will be available on July 2.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
