Florida-based Volatility Shares LLC is launching two exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tied to Solana futures. According to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), these products will begin trading today—marking the first time traditional finance (TradFi) investors gain specialized ETF access to all of the five largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
The CME Group, the world’s largest futures exchange, introduced Solana futures on Monday. Building on that, Volatility Shares’ Solana ETF will replicate the performance of these Solana futures starting tomorrow. Meanwhile, the Volatility Shares 2X Solana ETF (ticker: SOLT) will offer double leveraged exposure for those looking for amplified returns in the still-nascent Solana futures market.
“First-ever Solana ETFs in the US are launching in tomorrow from VolShares. Will track futures. One is 2x. Solana equiv of BITO and BITX,” commented Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas in a post on X yesterday.
Despite the fanfare around these new ETFs, the initial enthusiasm for Solana futures seems relatively modest. Recent data shows that Solana futures have generated a daily nominal trading volume of approximately $12.3 million—a stark contrast to the early days of Bitcoin and Ethereum futures, which saw substantially higher figures at their respective launches.
However, research firm K33 points out that the lower nominal volume aligns with Solana’s market capitalization when compared proportionally to Bitcoin and Ethereum’s size at their debuts. “With little fuzz and fanfare, SOL futures launched on CME yesterday. Launch day volumes were well below those of the BTC and ETH launches. However, if you normalize volumes to market caps at the launch days, the launch aligns closer to the two,” wrote Vetle Lunde, Head of Research at K33, in a X post.
Solana Price At A Pivotal Point
Solana is currently trading at $131.6, down more than 50% from its all-time high (ATH) in mid-January. Much of this downturn has been attributed to waning enthusiasm in memecoins—an area where Solana has been particularly active and has often been billed as an “Ethereum killer.”
Still, over the past 24 hours, Solana has gained more than 6%, partly buoyed by the broader crypto market’s reaction to the latest Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) decision. While the Federal Reserve opted to keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged, the central bank also announced a significant slowdown in its bond runoff program—often referred to as “quantitative tightening.”
Starting in April, the Fed will reduce its monthly government bond runoff from $25 billion to $5 billion, a move that many analysts interpret as bullish for risk assets like cryptocurrencies.
From a technical perspective, the SOL price is approaching the 0.5 Fibonacci retracement level at $133, a threshold that closely aligns with the 100-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) at $133.65.
A daily close above both levels would be considered bullish, opening the possibility of a rally toward the 0.618 Fibonacci retracement at $166.7, which intersects with the 50-day EMA. In the longer term, traders are eyeing the mid-January ATH near $296 as a potential target—although conquering the immediate resistance levels remains a critical hurdle.
