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Institutional interest has been shifting toward Solana in recent weeks as bitcoin and ether lag. The token tied to the Ethereum alternative is up about 15% in the past two weeks, while ether is flat and bitcoin is down 4%. In the past month, SOL has gained 30%, outperforming ether (up 24%) and bitcoin (down 2%) in that period. Solana’s rally picked up more recently after VanEck filed to launch a staked Solana ETF in partnership with the decentralized finance platform Jito. Adding to that momentum was a Bloomberg report last week that said Galaxy and Jump are seeking $1 billion to establish a Solana-focused treasury vehicle. SOL last week rose to a six-month high of $216.87, though it’s pulled back a bit since. “Solana is the standout performer. It’s at a key resistance level, and any positive macro signal, like confirmation of a U.S. rate cut, could send it to new highs,” said Leo Zhao, investment director at MEXC Ventures. Additionally, “more digital asset treasury companies are accumulating SOL, positioning it not just as a speculative play but as a reserve asset with yield potential.” Solana, up 8% in 2025, still has a ways to go to catch up to blue-chip bitcoin and ether, which have gained 18% and 32%, respectively, this year. SOL.CM= YTD mountain Solana year to date It’s “a very rare dynamic – that bitcoin is experiencing a 10% drawdown and Ethereum is not – and that does symbolize a structural shift in the market as many of the banks, brokers and Fortune 1000s begin to embrace stable coins and signal that they will look to settle their stable point transactions on the open source rails like Ethereum and Solana,” said Matthew Sigel, VanEck head of digital asset research. Meme coin crash out The five-year-old Solana network hosts some of the most popular meme coins like dogwifhat and Pudgy Penguins , as well as decentralized finance (DeFi) and gaming projects. When it entered the crypto market it quickly won the hearts and minds of crypto developers and investors as a faster and cheaper alternative to Ethereum — whose native ETH token had struggled for many months until its recent, sudden rally this summer, in part due to Solana taking market share. At the beginning of 2025, SOL ran to an all-time high of $295. That rally was driven by a surge of interest in politically-themed tokens launched on the Solana blockchain – including the “Official Trump” meme coin and LIBRA , the token promoted by Argentine President Javier Milei – which led to major network congestion. By February, the meme coin mania had dropped off. During the April risk-off slump, SOL became one of the hardest hit cryptocurrencies, falling to a low of $95. Institutional interest Institutional interest in Solana’s more serious potential hasn’t faded, and despite Trump’s meme coin raising eyebrows in and out of the crypto community, his friendly stance toward crypto has helped. “Up until the change of administration last year it was perceived as being pretty risky for [traditional finance] companies to start engaging in serious ways with blockchain protocols,” said Austin Federa, former strategy lead at the Solana Foundation and co-founder of blockchain company DoubleZero. “The change in tone from the SEC is pretty remarkable. … [It] brought an industry that existed in a bit of a regulatory undefined space into something that is now more integrated and more holistically part of the traditional financial ecosystem.” Several asset managers have filed to launch ETFs tracking the performance of SOL, including Grayscale, Franklin Templeton, VanEck and Bitwise. While BlackRock hasn’t applied to launch one, it expanded its tokenized money market fund known as BUIDL (which stands for the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund) to Solana this year. In April, a team of former Kraken executives acquired majority ownership of a small software company to turn it into the SOL treasury firm DeFi Development . The company intends to not just acquire SOL tokens, but to “stake” them as well — or earning rewards for locking up SOL tokens on the network. That’s been a big draw for institutional investors. In July, Cathie Wood’s Ark began staking SOL through a similar company based in Canada called SOL Strategies . Additionally, Galaxy on Wednesday began offering tokenized public shares of its company on Solana . The investment startup Republic similarly introduced tokenized shares of SpaceX on Solana earlier this summer. “If you believe in the tokenization theme – that we’re going to start tokenizing everything from farmland to buildings to the stock market – this is the best vehicle because of the amount of throughput,” Ritholtz’s Josh Brown said of Solana in a July “Halftime Report” appearance . “The amount of transactions you can do every minute in Solana is higher than [on] any other layer one [network] … This is a maturing asset class that’s got both government support and institutional sponsorship.” He also said the market will likely get a Solana ETF this year, which would “raise awareness and drive a lot more people to learn about what it is and why it matters.”
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