I didn’t believe the 91% number at first—here’s why
I woke up yesterday to a flurry of crypto Twitter posts screaming, “Solana ETF approval odds now 91%! 🚀”. Frankly, I rolled my eyes. We’ve all been burned by over-optimistic probability models before—remember the perpetual 95% odds on a spot Bitcoin ETF back in 2022? In my experience, anything north of 70% in the crypto regulatory lottery deserves a double-take.
So I spent the last 24 hours doing what any reasonably suspicious reporter would do: I opened up my messy Google Sheet of ETF filings, cross-checked the CBOE 19b-4 revisions, pinged a couple of ex-SEC staffers on Signal, and—because I can’t help myself—scanned the derivatives dashboards on Coinglass and Laevitas. What I found wasn’t a smoking gun, but it was enough to make me stop scoffing at that 91% headline.
Here’s what actually moved the approval odds
The statistic everyone cites comes from GSR’s ETF Probability Tracker, which shot Solana’s chances from 54% to 91% after last Friday’s uptick in bipartisan chatter on Capitol Hill. Two aides (one Dem, one GOP) confirmed to me that Solana is suddenly “less radioactive” than Ethereum because SOL has no explicit proof-of-stake yield baked into the ETF wrapper. That nuance matters more than you’d think.
Bloomberg’s James Seyffart echoed the mood swing in a since-deleted tweet:
“I’m honestly shocked at how favorable staff feedback was on the Solana proposal versus ETH.”I tried DM-ing him for details, but he politely ghosted me—no surprise, those NDAs are brutal.
Follow the money, not the Twitter spaces
While CT (Crypto Twitter) argued about semantics, open interest on Solana perpetuals quietly ballooned 18% in three days. According to Coinglass, we’re sitting at $2.1 billion OI—just shy of the December 2023 all-time high. More interestingly, funding rates stayed below 0.02%, signaling that big wallets are building directional exposure without paying an arm and a leg in carry fees.
Meanwhile, Arkham caught two fresh Alameda-tagged addresses moving 620,000 SOL (~$88 million) onto Binance and OKX late Monday night. Liquidation fodder? Maybe. But if you pair that transfer with the 6% spike in CME’s SOL futures premium, it smells like collateral staging rather than panic selling. I can’t prove it yet, but I’d bet a bag of tacos SBF’s bankruptcy trustees are getting cute with their hedges.
On-chain tells a story Wall Street ignores
Let’s zoom out from the derivatives sandbox. Daily active addresses on Solana have camped above one million for nine consecutive days, per Messari’s Dune board. That’s the longest streak since the memecoin carnival in Q1. Even fees—famously minuscule on SOL—are up 34% month-over-month. People are actually paying more to use the network, which is a perverse bullish signal in Solana land.
And then there’s the NFT angle no one wants to talk about because it feels so 2021: Magic Eden volume quietly flipped Blur last weekend if you exclude wash trades (shout-out to Hildobby’s radar script). The top collection? Mad Lads, minted on—you guessed it—Solana. Whether you love or hate JPEGs, secondary market heat tends to front-run token flows. I learned that from the Axie mania and keep a sticky note on my desk that says, “NFT volume = canary.”
Why $300 isn’t as crazy as it sounds
Okay, let’s connect some dots. SOL traded at $187 when I started scribbling this piece. The prior cycle’s high was $259 (November 2021). If the ETF chatter pushes SOL to retest that level, we’re talking about a mere 38% climb. For context, Bitcoin ran 47% in 31 days after BlackRock’s ETF filing last year—on lower relative open interest than Solana has right now. I’m not saying history repeats like clockwork, but markets love symmetry almost as much as traders love leverage.
Also consider the Grayscale GSOL trust. It’s trading at a 6% premium to NAV—tiny by Grayscale standards, but premiums usually precede uplisting hype. Remember GBTC flipping from a 20% discount to a 10% premium just before the BTC ETF green light? Same movie, different chain.
The skeptic in me can’t ignore three red flags
1. Validator centralization. Solana still has 33% of stake concentrated in the top 19 validators. If Gensler wakes up cranky and decides that smells like control by a “common enterprise,” all bets are off.
2. Outage PTSD. I lost a small fortune during the February 2023 five-hour network freeze. Regulators remember these things, even if memes move on.
3. Congressional calendar crunch. August recess is around the corner. If the SEC doesn’t issue comments by mid-July, we slide into election-season gridlock. 91% odds can plummet to 9% overnight.
I asked Brian Kelly (yes, the BKCM guy from CNBC) whether he’s worried about those factors. His reply: “Always worried, still long.” Classic BK—hedged optimism in four words.
Here’s the part that really surprised me
While everyone is fixated on a spot ETF, the real liquidity might come from Solana ETPs launching in Canada and Europe first. 21Shares has a Solana ETP on the Swiss SIX exchange already. Trading volume there tripled last week, yet almost no U.S. pundits mentioned it. If EU desks are front-running a U.S. approval, that 91% number may be more reflection than prediction.
Another curveball: Robinhood quietly reinstated Solana staking for select U.S. users two weeks ago—despite the SEC’s Wells notice against their crypto arm. I double-checked with three Robinhood beta testers; each confirmed 4.9% APR on SOL staking inside the app. Feels like an odd move unless they’re betting on near-term regulatory clarity.
Why this matters for your portfolio
If you’re sitting on the sidelines waiting for a neat technical breakout, you might miss the ETF headline gap. Historically, SEC approvals drop pre-market, and Coinbase (the closest thing Solana has to a price oracle in TradFi) spikes before retail can hit the buy button. I think partial exposure—spot or options—makes more sense than wistful tweets about “buying the dip.”
Personally, I’m long a ladder of $240 and $280 September calls on Deribit. They cost 0.17 SOL each when I bought them, a cheeky bet that $300 hits by autumn. Could they expire worthless? Absolutely. But if the 91% crowd is half right, upside beats downside 3-to-1 on my napkin math.
Where I might be dead wrong
1. The SEC could stall under the guise of “consumer protection,” nuking sentiment.
2. A Solana validator exploit (think shutdown v2) could crater network trust faster than a Gary Gensler tweet.
3. Macro ruins everything. If the 10-year yield rips past 5%, risk assets bleed—ETF or not.
I’m keeping 40% of my ammo in stablecoins for exactly those scenarios. Call it PTSD from the Terra collapse, but cash is an underrated asset in crypto.
My completely non-financial, gut-level forecast
If the SEC issues comment letters by July 12, I expect SOL to punch through $220 within 48 hours and flirt with $300 by early September. If silence drags into August, all those leveraged longs unwind, and we revisit $150 on a cascading margin flush. Either way, volatility is the only certainty.
I’ll keep prodding my Capitol Hill sources and watching that GSOL premium like a hawk. Until then, remember: in crypto, the loudest cheerleaders usually exit first. Keep your stop-losses tight and your DMs encrypted.
