The long-awaited launch of Solana spot ETFs in the US has sparked strong demand, analysts say – but you wouldn’t know it judging by the SOL. price action.
The token, which reached a high of $205 a day before the ETF’s launch last Tuesday, fell 20% to $165 in a week. It has significantly underperformed the already weak stock of crypto majors Bitcoin and ether which fell by approximately 6% and 12% respectively.
All of this happened despite Solana-based exchange-traded products seeing their second-highest weekly net inflow last week with $421 million, according to a CoinShares report.
Vetle Lunde, head of research at K33, called the ETFs’ first week “very strong”, adding that this was all the more commendable when compared to the strong outflows of their BTC and ETH counterparts.
“The launch of Solana spot ETFs in the US was a resounding success, driving strong investor demand despite broader crypto fund outflows,” Lunde said in a note.
Most of the influx went to Bitwise’s Solana ETF (BSOL), which attracted about $199 million in new funds and launched with nearly $223 million in seed capital, according to data from Farside Investors.
That $421 million total made BSOL the best-performing crypto ETF of the week, even surpassing BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), which saw moderate demand as the price of bitcoin continued to fall, according to CoinShares data.
In contrast, the other Solana spot ETF, Grayscale’s Solana Trust (GSOL), only raised $2.2 million. Nonetheless, it entered the market with $102 million in assets under management after converting an existing closed-end product.
GSOL charges a 0.35% management fee, much lower than the 1.5% fee on its flagship Bitcoin or Ether, GBTC and ETHE products. Despite this, Bitwise reduced this figure with a 0.20% fee on BSOL.
“BSOL’s lower fees and first-mover advantage have fueled its rapid growth, while GSOL’s higher costs and later debut have tempered inflows,” noted K33’s Lunde.
