A new Solana exchange-traded fund (ETF) has been filed by VanEck, one of the first spot Bitcoin ETF providers in the US. Head of VanEck’s digital assets research Matthew Sigel announced on X on June 27 that the company had submitted an application to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a Solana ETF.According to Sigel, the VanEck Solana Trust is a new fund that seeks to take advantage of Solana’s high utility, decentralized structure, and economic viability. The executive claims that the trust is the first Solana ETF to be filed in the US.
In the post, Sigel provided a few remarks on why the company believes SOL is a commodity. He wrote.
“We believe the native token, SOL, functions similarly to other digital commodities such as Bitcoin and Ether. It is utilized to pay for transaction fees and computational services on the blockchain. Like ether on the Ethereum network, SOL can be traded on digital asset platforms or used in peer-to-peer transactions.”
VanEck stated in the SEC filing that, should the SEC approve it, the VanEck Solana Trust is anticipated to be listed on the Cboe BZX Exchange.
The investing goal of the VanEck Solana Trust is to track the performance of the Solana cryptocurrency’s price, less the trust’s operating costs. The trust will use the MarketVector Solana Benchmark Rate index to value its shares on a daily basis, according to the filing. According to MarketVector’s analysis of the industry-leading CCData Centralized Exchange Benchmark assessment report, the top five SOL trading platforms are represented in this index, which is based on pricing published by those platforms.
Shortly after the US SEC authorized the introduction of spot Ether ETFs in the US on May 23, 2024, VanEck filed for the Solana ETF. Long-running debates regarding the cryptocurrency Ethereum’s status were resolved by the approval, which approved it as a commodity rather than a security. The SEC apparently ended its probe of Ether’s securities status on June 19.