Solana Futures ETF Performance Pales Compared to Bitcoin, Analyst Says

Key Points

• Solana ETF Futures products have not achieved the same success as similar Bitcoin products.
• Bitcoin dominates the market with a 61% share, while Solana is fifth with a 2.4% share.

Solana ETF Futures Underperform

Senior Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas has observed that the recently launched Solana [SOL] ETF (exchange traded funds) Futures have not replicated the success of their Bitcoin counterparts.

Balchunas stated, “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.”

The Solana ETF Futures products, introduced by Volatility Shares, debuted on March 20th and achieved $1 million in trading volume during the initial trading days.

However, as indicated by a Bloomberg chart, volumes significantly dropped on 31st March, hitting a record low of $48K.

Bitcoin vs Solana

Balchunas had previously suggested that a cryptocurrency’s dominance in the spot market could influence interest in new ETF products.

Currently, Bitcoin dominates the market with a 61% share, followed by Ethereum at 8%, while Solana is in fifth place with a 2.4% share, having recently been overtaken by Binance Coin.

In line with the market dominance chart, Bitcoin ETFs have seen the most interest since their introduction. The spot Bitcoin ETFs have accumulated $36B in inflows since their launch last year.

In contrast, U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs, launched in July last year, have seen $2.4B in cumulative inflows, 15 times less than Bitcoin ETFs.

Future of Solana ETFs

The question now is whether U.S. spot Solana ETFs, if approved, will follow the same trend. This trend has been mirrored by the recently launched Solana CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) Futures.

On their debut day, Solana CME Futures saw $12M in trading volumes, nearly 10 times less than Bitcoin CME Futures ($102M) and Ethereum’s $31M.

Moreover, speculators seem more confident with Bitcoin during market-wide downturns than with Ethereum or Solana. During the Q1 retracement, Solana underperformed Bitcoin by almost 50%.

A continued decline could drag the Solana/Bitcoin ratio to 0.0012 (trendline support) before a potential rebound. This indicator measures Solana’s price performance relative to Bitcoin. At the time of writing, the altcoin was valued at $128 and remained above the crucial $120 yearly support.