The upcoming launch of Solana (SOL) futures on the Chicago Mercantile Alternate (CME), a US derivatives change, alerts that the primary US SOL exchange-traded fund (ETF) listings are coming quickly, Chris Chung, founding father of Solana-based swap platform Titan, instructed Cointelegraph.
On March 17, CME is getting ready to launch SOL futures contracts. They are going to be among the many first regulated Solana futures to hit the US market after Coinbase’s launched in February.
The itemizing “paves the best way for the eventual approval of SOL ETFs,” Chung instructed Cointelegraph.
Chung stated he expects the US Securities and Alternate Fee (SEC) to approve asset managers VanEck and Canary Capital’s proposed spot Solana ETFs as quickly as Could.
The existence of regulated Solana futures “alerts to regulators that Solana is maturing as an asset, making it simpler for them to greenlight further monetary merchandise of comparable threat and kind,” Chung stated.
Futures contracts are standardized agreements to purchase or promote an underlying asset at a future date. They play an important supporting function for spot cryptocurrency ETFs as a result of regulated futures markets present a steady benchmark for measuring a digital asset’s efficiency.
CME already lists futures contracts for Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH). US regulators permitted ETFs for each of these cryptocurrencies final yr.
CME already lists crypto futures, together with Bitcoin contracts. Supply: CME
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Past memecoins
Moreover, Solana futures and ETFs will assist develop Solana’s progress story past memecoins, which have been central to the blockchain community’s success in 2024, Chung stated.
These merchandise “will deliver extra severe, sticky capital and pave the best way for the event of different real-world use circumstances, resembling funds and remittances,” in keeping with Chung.
These use circumstances are “[f]ar extra boring than memecoins, maybe, however a dependable supply of long-term income that can buoy Solana’s worth within the subsequent bear market.”
Memecoin buying and selling, largely tied to the favored Pump.enjoyable platform, contains roughly 80% of the Solana blockchain community’s revenues, in keeping with asset supervisor VanEck.
Nevertheless, exercise on the Solana community declined in February after a sequence of memecoin-related scandals soured sentiment amongst retail merchants.
Solana vs. Ethereum worth chart. Supply: TradingView
Rivaling Ethereum
Nonetheless, cryptocurrency buying and selling volumes on Solana proceed to rival these of your complete Ethereum ecosystem, together with its layer-2 scaling chains, VanEck stated on March 6.
Chung stated he expects Solana ETFs to take off amongst retail traders, partly due to the challenges going through rival good contract platform Ethereum.
Solana’s native SOL token has carried out about twice in addition to Ether since early 2024, in keeping with TradingView.
Ethereum’s spot worth has struggled since March 2024, when the community’s Dencun improve minimize transaction charges by roughly 95%.
“With the extraordinarily weak worth motion we’re seeing in ETH, Solana is now the one choice for retail traders desirous to get publicity to crypto past Bitcoin, however not prepared to go full degen,” Chung stated.
Bloomberg Intelligence has set the percentages of the SEC approving spot Solana and Litecoin ETFs at 70%.
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