VanEck, one of the pioneering issuers of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF) in the United States, has now filed for a Solana ETF. Matthew Sigel, VanEck’s head of digital assets research, announced on June 27 that the firm submitted the filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The new fund, named the VanEck Solana Trust, aims to leverage Solana’s decentralized nature, high utility, and economic feasibility. Sigel stated that this is the first Solana ETF filing in the United States.
Sigel explained the rationale behind considering SOL a commodity, similar to Bitcoin and Ether. He noted that SOL is used to pay for transaction fees and computational services on the blockchain, and can be traded on digital asset platforms or used in peer-to-peer transactions.
The VanEck Solana Trust aims to track the price performance of Solana, minus operational expenses. The trust’s shares will be valued daily based on the MarketVector Solana Benchmark Rate index, which uses prices from the top five SOL trading platforms as determined by the CCData Centralized Exchange Benchmark review report.
This filing follows the SEC’s approval of spot Ether ETFs on May 23, 2024, which affirmed Ether’s status as a commodity. Consequently, the SEC dropped an investigation into whether Ether is a security on June 19.
