- SOL ETF Futures products have failed to mirror BTC’s success.
- Will the same fate befall likely U.S. spot SOL ETF products?
Senior Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas noted that recently launched Solana [SOL] ETF (exchanged traded funds) Futures haven’t matched the performance of similar BTC products.
Balchunas said,
“The new Solana futures ETF hasn’t done much, a million in volume first few days is decent for normal ETF but nothing vs BTC, about 80x less than $BITO’s first few days or $IBIT’s.. The further you get away from btc the less asset there will be.”
Source: Bloomberg
The SOL ETF Futures products by Volatility Shares debuted on the 20th of March and tapped $1 million in trading volume during the early trading days.
However, as shown by the attached Bloomberg chart, volumes tanked significantly on 31st March, with a record low of $48K.
Solana vs. Bitcoin
Balchunas had earlier projected that their dominance on the spot market could dictate interest in new ETF products.
Currently, BTC dominates the market with 61%, followed by Ethereum [ETH] at 8%, while SOL is fifth at 2.4% after being flipped by Binance Coin [BNB] recently.
Source: CoinMarketCap
Like the market dominance chart, BTC ETFs have recorded the most traction since their debut. The spot BTC ETFs have recorded $36B in cumulative inflows since they launched last year.
On the contrary, U.S. spot ETH ETFs, launched last July, saw $2.4B in cumulative inflows — A 15x less than BTC ETFs.
If approved, will the same trend follow U.S. spot SOL ETFs? In fact, even the recently launched SOL CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) Futures echoed the similar trend projected by Balchunas.
On the debut day, SOL CME Futures had $12M in trading volumes, nearly 10x less than BTC CME Futures ($102M) and ETH’s $31M.
Additionally, speculators appeared more comfortable with BTC during market-wide drawdowns than ETH or SOL. During the Q1 retracement, SOL underperformed BTC by nearly 50%.
Source: SOL/BTC, TradingView
An extended weakening could drag the SOL/BTC ratio to 0.0012 (trendline support) before a potential rebound.
The indicator gauges SOL’s price performance relative to BTC. Meanwhile, the altcoin was valued at $128 at the time of writing and still held above the crucial $120 yearly support.
