BlackRock Solana ETF isn’t going away anytime soon, CIO confirms

BlackRock has confirmed that it has no plans to launch a Solana (SOL) ETF anytime soon, despite the huge success of its Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs launched this year.

The company’s exit from small-cap altcoins leaves room for other asset managers to compete in this area, with some already coming forward to launch the product.

BlackRock’s Take On A Solana ETF

During a Tuesday interview with Bloomberg, BlackRock CIO Samara Cohen said the launch of the BlackRock Solana ETF is “not short-term.”

“We really look at investability — what meets the criteria, what meets the threshold to be delivered in an ETF,” Cohen explained. In terms of investment and customer demand, he said Bitcoin and Ethereum certainly meet that bar.

“I think it will be a while before we see anything else,” he added.

So far, both Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs have proven very successful. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has racked up nearly $20 billion in flows since January 11 and had the best 30-day opening of any ETF in history. After its first week, BlackRock’s Ethereum ETF controls $440 million in ETH, per on-chain data.

Still, the case for launching a Solana ETF is questionable.

At Bitcoin 2024 last week, Robert Mitchnick, head of digital assets at BlackRock, noted that “the next plausible investable asset is, like, 3%” of the total crypto market cap. “It’s nowhere near being at that threshold or maturity history, liquidity, et cetera.”

In March, Mitchnick emphasized that Bitcoin remained the “overwhelming top priority” among crypto-focused customers. “Then a bit of Ethereum, and very little of everything else,” he stressed.

Can a Solana ETF Really Happen?

In late June, VanEck became the first company to apply for a Solana spot ETF in the United States. The company argued that regulators had little reason to deny them public trading, given that SOL functions like BTC and ETH as digital commodities, which had already been given the green light.

“Like Ether on the Ethereum network, SOL can be traded on digital asset platforms or used in peer-to-peer transactions,” Matthew Sigel, VanEck’s head of digital asset research, said at the time.

However, unlike BTC and ETH, Solana does not yet have a futures market on the CME, a cornerstone of crypto’s legal arguments for approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs. The verdict is still out on whether SOL is a security token, with the SEC alleging as much in its Coinbase lawsuit.

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