According to Bitwise, staking funds for Solana can take their place on traditional exchanges. On the very first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, the volume for their ETF Bitwise Solana Staking exceeded $56 million.
Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan said on Chain Reaction that BSOL is the “missing piece of the puzzle” — the product immediately attracted multi-million dollar investments from investors.
Hougan noted that until now, it was more profitable for investors to buy Solana directly and stake tokens themselves than to use an ETF or other products that do not support staking.
“When you do everything through an ETF, you get all its advantages: minimal fees, institutional custody, purchase in a couple of clicks directly through a broker — and staking is already built in. I am sure that this approach will become one of the main ways to invest in Solana worldwide. This is truly a big story,” he explained.
Investors Need Both Custody and Staking Income
Hougan explained how a staking ETF differs from classic crypto funds like those that provide access to Bitcoin or Ethereum. Those simply reflect the price of the asset, but here the benefit is twofold.
“When you invest in a product like $BSOL, you get not only the price dynamics of Solana, but also about 7% additional yield in SOL annually. For investors from traditional finance, this can roughly be compared to a dividend,” he noted.
In addition, according to Hougan, such an ETF helps decentralize and secure the Solana network. At launch, BSOL had $222 million — that’s more than 1.1 million SOL.
Senior Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas added that the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF became the fund with the highest trading volume among all new ETFs of 2025 on launch day.
Regulatory Shift Opened the Door for Solana Staking ETF
According to Hougan, the launch of the ETF for staking Solana became possible thanks to a sharp change in the attitude of regulators in the US. While Gary Gensler headed the SEC, even Bitcoin and Ethereum funds took years to get approved.
“Without a change of course from the regulators, this would have been simply impossible. Even a regular Solana fund would have been unrealistic. With Ethereum, we barely managed to get through under the old SEC approach. And for regulators to approve staking as well — that would have been too much,” Hougan stated.
He noted that the SEC struggled to understand such aspects as liquidity, taxation, and technical features of Proof-of-Stake. However, the launch of Bitwise BSOL and Grayscale GSOL could be the start of a new wave of investment products tied to staking.
“We didn’t just do it. Now the way is open for launching other ETPs with staking functionality. This is the most important proof of concept for the entire crypto fund story in the US.”
