VanEck, one of the first issuers of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States, has filed for a new Solana ETF.
Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck, took to X on June 27 to announce that the firm has filed for a Solana (SOL) ETF with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The new fund, called the VanEck Solana Trust, aims to capitalize on Solana’s decentralized nature, high utility and economic feasibility, Sigel said. According to the executive, the trust is the first filing for a Solana ETF in the United States.
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.”
In the filing with the SEC, VanEck specified that the VanEck Solana Trust is expected to be listed on the Cboe BZX Exchange, should it be approved by the SEC.
Solana Trust aims for growth
The VanEck Solana Trust’s investment objective is to reflect the performance of the price of the Solana cryptocurrency, excluding the expenses of operations of the trust.
The filing states that the trust will value its shares daily using the MarketVector Solana Benchmark Rate index. This index is calculated based on prices provided by trading platforms that MarketVector considers the top five SOL trading platforms, as determined by the industry-leading CCData Centralized Exchange Benchmark review report.
Related: Ethereum could fall 30% after spot ETH ETFs launch — Crypto VC
VanEck’s Solana ETF filing comes shortly after the U.S. SEC approved the launch of spot Ether (ETH) ETFs in the U.S. on May 23, 2024. The approval ended long-running arguments about the status of ETH cryptocurrency, greenlighting it as a commodity rather than a security.
Subsequently, the SEC reportedly dropped an investigation into whether Ether is a security on June 19.
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