Solana ETF Stuns Wall Street: Beats XRP, ETH, Inspires Institutional FOMO 🤑

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  • Ascends above XRP and ETH futures like a pious bishop at Evensong, ranking in top 1% of launches—champagne corks popping everywhere. 🥂
  • Institutional money flocks: $167M in Solana CME futures, as if all the old boys’ clubs just discovered cryptocurrency. đź’Ľ
  • Bears a 1.4% fee; risks include validators taking unscheduled sabbaticals and network melodrama. 🤷‍♂️

On a day that will surely haunt the dreams of XRP and Ethereum traders, July 2, 2025, the REX-Osprey Solana + Staking ETF (SSK) debuted on the Cboe BZX Exchange with a $33 million trading volume and $12 million in net inflows. The sheer speed made lesser launches look like genteel garden parties—think cucumber sandwiches, but without the excitement of blockchain volatility.

Solana ETF’s Meteoric Debut (with a Side of Staking Sauce)


Source – X 

Having barely broken a sweat, the SSK ETF clocked in with $20 million traded in its initial hours, politely elbowing its way into the top 1% of ETF launches. Unlike its more pedestrian cousins, it isn’t content merely to watch Solana; it wades into the pool, staking and earning rewards—a first for a U.S.-traded fund. Trading volume reached $33 million, while the launch-day inflow of $12 million quietly made SOLZ (the Solana futures ETF) look like pocket change at a Mayfair soirée.

This ETF, the self-styled Henry Pulling of finance, follows Solana’s price but with the added thrill of staking, tossing in an estimated 7.3% annualized yield to keep things spicy. Some 80% of investor money cavorts in spot SOL, with over half of it staked on-chain via Anchorage Digital, a custodian with regulations so stringent, one needs to submit an essay just to say “hello.” Investors receive monthly cash payments—blockchain returns served à la carte, no cryptographic key-fumbling required.

The SSK spot-pricing model relies on the CME CF Solana-Dollar Reference Rate, thus miraculously avoiding the agony of contango and assuring investors they won’t lose their lunch (or at least, not in the futures market sense).

Institutions Take the Bait, SEC Looks on Dubiously

Solana’s price obligingly ascended 5% to $155 by July 3, 2025, while open interest in Solana CME futures leapt 13% to a record-smashing $167 million—clearly, someone’s hedge fund manager got a new set of golf clubs. The SSK ETF’s debut proved beyond doubt that U.S. institutions have a taste for staking, finding futures ETFs as exciting as cold porridge. XRP and Ethereum can only look on in envy, stirring their tea with slightly trembling hands.

Structured as a C-corporation under the Investment Company Act of 1940—a fine bit of legal choreography—the fund sidestepped the SEC’s labyrinthine approval process with the subtlety of a butler pocketing the family silver. Approximately 40% of assets find themselves in foreign Solana ETPs, while the rest go gallivanting into directly pledged SOL and liquid staking tokens like JitoSOL. For once, “regulated access to crypto yields” isn’t purely an exercise in irony.

The annual 1.4% fee stands high above most passive ETFs, justified by the fund’s decidedly unpassive approach: staking, custody, and the ever-present possibility that someone somewhere will confuse a validator for a houseplant. Cozy risks—validator mischief and melodramatic networks—are at least nominally managed by institutions Galaxy and Figment, who presumably don their top hats for such occasions. If all goes according to the analysts’ tea leaves, the SEC may soon greenlight spot Solana, XRP, and Litecoin ETFs, bringing the Dickensian drama of crypto ETFs to a new high, and perhaps one step closer to respectability.

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2025-07-05 11:41