In brief
- The SEC’s adoption of generic listing standards has made the 19b-4 review clock irrelevant, shifting the approval process to S-1 registrations.
- Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas said Solana’s S-1 just filed its fourth amendment, signaling that approval could come soon.
- A Solana ETF could trigger speculative buying but may also face a “sell the news” correction similar to earlier Bitcoin and Ethereum launches, Decrypt was told.
A U.S. Solana exchange-traded fund could just be right around the corner.
That’s according to Bloomberg senior analyst Eric Balchunas, who, on Monday, wrote in a tweet that the approval odds from the Securities and Exchange Commission had jumped from a near certainty to definite.
“Honestly, the odds are really 100% now,” he wrote. “Generic listing standards make the 19b-4s and their ‘clock’ meaningless.”
Before the recent change, 19b-4 filings triggered a statutory review “clock,” giving the SEC a fixed timeline, up to 240 days, to approve or deny a proposed ETF.
But after the agency approved “generic listing standards” earlier this month, that timeline has become largely irrelevant, leaving the fate of new ETFs tied instead to the S-1 registration statements that require a separate sign-off from the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance.
“That just leaves the S-1s waiting for formal green light from Corp Finance. And they just submitted amendment #4 for Solana. The baby could come any day. Be ready,” Balchunas wrote.
A ‘speculative’ trade
“A Solana ETF could trigger speculative buying ahead of approval, followed by a potential ‘sell the news’ correction once launched—similar to what we saw with Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs,” Jeffery Ding, chief analyst at HashKey Group, told Decrypt.
U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs amassed $12.13 billion in cumulative flows in the first ten weeks, according to SoSoValue.
Despite being the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Ethereum ETFs witnessed $522.97 million in outflows. It later course corrected in the following three months to $3.56 billion in inflows.
When asked if Solana ETFs could attract more inflows than Ethereum’s ETF did, Ding said, “In the short run, that’s unlikely.”
“Institutional investors already have a clearer understanding of Ethereum’s asset characteristics and associated risks,” he said. “Its ecosystem hosts critical financial infrastructure such as real-world assets and stablecoin issuance, both of which are tightly connected to the traditional financial system.”
Solana is up less than a percent on the day to $211.17, according to CoinGecko data.
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