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- BlackRock’s CIO, Samara Cohen, has put to rest rumours that the company is considering a Solana ETF, saying that investors haven’t expressed interest in SOL yet.
- However, some of its peers, including Franklin Templeton, have indicated that they are exploring SOL ETFs, although none has taken any meaningful step forward.
Now that Bitcoin and Ethereum have their exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the market, which crypto is next? This has been the question investors have been posing, with Solana and XRP among those cited as the best of the rest. However, for BlackRock, the ETF race stops with BTC and ETH, at least for now.
Samara Cohen, the CIO for ETFs and Index Investments at BlackRock, was on Bloomberg on Monday to discuss the latest in the world of ETFs. And unlike in the past, when crypto rarely ever came up, it’s one of the hottest topics in the ETF space this year. She delved into the launch of BlackRock’s Ethereum spot ETF (ETHA), the rest of the ETH products and more.
Responding to a question on whether a Solana ETF would be next now that the company has seen great success with both BTC and ETH, Cohen noted, “Not in the near term”, adding that there isn’t enough demand from investors yet.
We really look at the investability to see what meets the criteria, what meets the bar to be delivered in an ETF. For us, both in terms of investability and also what we hear from our clients, Bitcoin and Ethereum definitely meet that bar, but it will be a while before we see anything else.
While the $10 trillion giant dismisses SOL, some of its peers and rivals are already exploring a Solana ETF. One of these is Franklin Templeton, a BlackRock rival with $1.5 trillion in assets under management. As we reported last week, the company was full of praise for Solana, saying it “has shown major adoption and continues to mature, overcoming technological growing pains and highlighting the potential of high-throughput, monolithic architectures.”
SOL trades at $182, dipping 5% in the past day as the broader market soured, for an $84.75 billion market cap, which was enough to keep it at fourth, just above BNB, which it flipped recently.
Ethereum ETFs’ Continued Growth Amid Grayscale Bleed
Still in the Bloomberg interview, the BlackRock CIO touched on the continued success of its Ethereum ETF. Known as ETHA, it has brought in $442 million, nearly twice the second-placed Bitwise, at $269 million. Fidelity is third with $219 million. Below these three on the fourth spot is Grayscale Mini, the crypto investment firm’s breakaway product with zero fees that branched off from its main ETF.
Grayscale’s main Ethereum ETH, ETHE, lost $1.5 billion in just four days.
Cohen says the growth will continue, telling Bloomberg:
Investors really want their ETH exposure, especially if they are going to use it in the context of an overall portfolio in an ecosystem they have confidence in.
