Bitcoin and Ethereum may have traded victory laps this year, but Solana is set to stage an encore.
At least that’s according to Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise.
Solana traded for $224 on Thursday, its highest price in seven months, and Hougan says it could be the next major cryptocurrency to experience a price rally.
Solana is 23% from its all-time high of $293, according to CoinGecko.
“All the ingredients are there for an epic end-of-year run for Solana,” Hougan said this week.
Those ingredients, according to him, are further investment into Solana exchange-traded funds and corporate treasuries stockpiling the sixth-largest cryptocurrency.
Market accelerants
Bitcoin and Ethereum both experienced significant surges this year, driven largely by the introduction of ETFs and increased corporate adoption.
Bitcoin’s price has surged 185% since Bitcoin ETFs hit the market in January 2024, while Ethereum has more than tripled in price.
Those same market accelerants may soon be directed towards Solana – assuming, of course, America’s top financial regulator greenlights any number of SOL ETF applications.
Hougan’s Bitwise is one of the applicants, which includes other fund issuers such as Grayscale, Franklin Templeton, VanEck, Canary Capital, and Galaxy Digital.
The SEC’s decision deadline for those applications is slated for mid-October, and a positive outcome could mean Solana ETFs hitting the market in the last quarter of the year.
Elsewhere, Solana is also among the cryptocurrencies that companies are stockpiling on their corporate balance sheets.
DeFi Development Corporation holds more than $456 million worth of Solana, the largest by any public company.
Meanwhile, Galaxy Digital, Jump Crypto, and Multicoin Capital have earmarked $1.65 billion to create a Solana treasury company.
Still, drinking from the institutional firehose created by ETFs and corporate treasuries might not be enough to push Solana, according to Hougan.
Solana also requires real-world utility to ensure any meaningful price rally.
