First VanEck, now 21Shares. What happens if the approval does go through?
Edited By: Jibin Mathew George
- 21Shares took VanEck’s lead in the pursuit of a Spot Solana ETF
- A surge in Solana inflows can be expected IF the applications go through
Solana [SOL]‘s market performance over the last few years has attracted the attention of many Wall Street institutions recently. Hence, it is not surprising that some of them are now very keen on the idea of a spot Solana ETF.
21Shares moves in
In a move to capitalize on the growing interest in SOL, Swiss asset management firm 21Shares has filed an application to list a Solana ETF in the United States. This filing closely follows a similar application submitted by its competitor – VanEck.
21Shares’ application hinges on the legal classification of the altcoin. The filing presumes that Solana is not considered a security under U.S law. This distinction is important because Security ETFs face stricter regulations, compared to standard ETFs.
If the SEC classifies it as a security, 21Shares might withdraw its application altogether. This potential withdrawal would stem from the additional registration requirements that come with security ETFs, which 21Shares may be unwilling to meet.
How will SOL be affected?
A potential spot Solana ETF is expected to boost the price of Solana (SOL), similar to how Bitcoin’s price surged after its spot ETF approval.
In fact, a recent analysis by GSR Markets actually used Bitcoin’s 2.3x price hike as a jumping-off point. It’s worth pointing out though that they acknowledged Solana ETFs likely won’t attract the same level of investment. To account for this, GSR instead explored three scenarios based on potential investment inflows, relative to Bitcoin ETFs.
In the Bear Case, they assumed an increase of 2% in SOL’s inflows. This assumed a low level of interest in Solana ETFs, with only 2% of the inflows compared to Bitcoin.
Next is the Base Case, which would result in 5% of the inflows compared to Bitcoin. This would be a more moderate scenario based on actual investment activity in Solana products from 2021 to 2023, excluding 2024 to avoid the influence of Bitcoin ETFs.
In the most bullish and optimistic scenario, GSR took into account SOL’s higher relative inflows in 2022 and 2023. It estimated that the altcoin could attract 14% of the inflows, compared to Bitcoin on average.
At press time, SOL was trading at $141.80, with its price down by 2.53% in the last 24 hours. In fact, its trading volume over the aforementioned period fell by 33.23% on the charts too.
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