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With lawsuits still pending over Solana’s classification as a security, SOL ETFs will likely have to wait until next year for their debut.
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Solana (SOL) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) may not launch in the United States until 2026 even under a crypto-friendly White House, James Seyffart, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst, said on Jan. 16.
Issuers “might see movement” on languishing Solana ETF filings after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20, Seyffart said during an interview with Blockworks.
However, “the timeline could extend into 2026 due to the SEC’s precedent of taking […] 240–260 days to review filings,” Seyffart said.
The review process is further complicated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s ongoing lawsuits against cryptocurrency exchanges alleging SOL constitutes an unregistered security, he said.
“The SEC’s Division of Enforcement is calling Solana a security, which prevents other SEC divisions from analyzing it for a commodities ETF wrapper,” Seyffart said.
Betting markets on the odds of a Solana ETF approval. Source: Polymarket
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Changing regulatory environment
Trump, who has promised to turn the US into the “world’s crypto capital,” plans to tap industry-friendly leaders to head key financial regulators, including the SEC.
Under President Joe Biden, the SEC has taken aggressive regulatory stances toward crypto, bringing hundreds of actions against industry firms.
In 2024, the agency authorized issuers to list spot Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) ETFs in January and July, respectively.
However, other ETF applications, including several proposed spot SOL ETFs, are languishing.
“A bunch of Solana ETF filings were made but weren’t acknowledged by the SEC — they were effectively denied outright,” Seyffart said.
In 2024, asset managers submitted a flurry of regulatory filings to list ETFs holding altcoins, including SOL, XRP (XRP) and Litecoin (LTC), among others.
Issuers are also waiting on approval for several planned crypto index ETFs designed to hold diverse baskets of digital tokens.
In effect, these filings were “call options on a Trump victory” in the US presidential race, Eric Balchunas, an ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said in October.
Not everyone shares Seyffart’s view. In November, Matthew Sigel, VanEck’s head of digital asset research, said the odds of a SOL ETF listing in the US before the end of 2025 are “overwhelmingly high.”
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This article first appeared at Cointelegraph.com News
