Bitwise CIO: Solana will be the next big thing
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Bitwise CIO: Solana will be the next big thing
Solana has all the elements in place for an explosive performance by year-end.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy: Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise
Translation: Luffy, Foresight News
Over the past 18 months, the recipe for high returns in crypto has been clear: combine "inflows into exchange-traded product (ETP) funds" with "large-scale corporate treasury accumulation," and strong returns follow.
Bitcoin followed this recipe, rising from $40,000 in January 2024 to its current level of $112,000. Ethereum adopted the same strategy in April 2025, after which its price tripled to $4,500.
This recipe working is no surprise—it's essentially classic supply and demand dynamics:
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Since January 11, 2024, the Bitcoin network has produced 322,681 BTC, while ETPs and corporations have purchased over 1.1 million BTC;
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Since April 15, 2025, the Ethereum network has produced 388,568 ETH, but ETPs and corporations have accumulated as much as 7.4 million ETH.
When demand exceeds supply, prices naturally rise.
Why I believe Solana will be the next breakout?
Solana now has the conditions in place to replicate this path.
Multiple issuers—including Bitwise, Grayscale, VanEck, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, Invesco, and Canary Capital—have filed applications to launch spot Solana ETPs. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will rule on these applications by October 10, 2025, meaning multiple institutions could begin launching spot Solana ETPs simultaneously in Q4 2025.
Meanwhile, over the past weekend, three major institutions—Galaxy Digital, Jump Crypto, and Multicoin Capital—committed $1.65 billion in cash and stablecoins to Forward Industries, a publicly traded large-scale Solana treasury company. Upon closing, this new entity will begin purchasing SOL tokens, staking them, and aiming to generate outsized returns.
Notably, Forward Industries has appointed Kyle Samani, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, as chairman. Multicoin is one of Solana’s earliest investors, and Samani is one of its most articulate and committed advocates. Just as Michael Saylor played a key role promoting Bitcoin in his role as Executive Chairman of Strategy, a Bitcoin treasury company, and Tom Lee championed Ethereum as Chairman of BitMine, an Ethereum treasury company, if Samani can similarly advocate for Solana’s value proposition on platforms like CNBC, Bloomberg, and Fox Business, it could help drive a flywheel effect in investor demand.
What is Solana’s core appeal?
Of course, ETP approval and treasury companies alone aren’t enough to guarantee investor interest. These investment vehicles must rest on compelling fundamental logic. A prime example: although Ethereum ETFs were approved as early as June 2024, it wasn’t until April 2025—when market interest in stablecoins surged—that Ethereum, as the “leading blockchain for stablecoins,” truly ignited.
So what is Solana’s core appeal?
Solana is a competitor to Ethereum, fundamentally a programmable blockchain capable of supporting stablecoins, tokenized assets, DeFi applications, and more. Its standout feature is that compared to Ethereum, it offers significantly higher transactions per second (TPS), extremely low transaction costs, and fast finality (the speed at which transactions become irreversible). In fact, the blockchain recently completed a major technical upgrade: transaction finalization time will drop from around 12 seconds to just 150 milliseconds—faster than the blink of an eye. Once live, Solana will rank among the world’s fastest blockchains.
Solana achieves this performance through a fundamentally different architecture than Ethereum—one that doesn’t rely on Layer 2 solutions, making it simpler for average users to use.
However, critics argue that Solana’s high performance comes at a cost: reduced decentralization and greater network fragility (making it more prone to outages).
Despite this, Solana has successfully attracted significant user adoption: among programmable blockchains, it ranks third in stablecoin liquidity (after Ethereum and Tron), and fourth in tokenized assets—with rapid growth momentum. Year-to-date, its assets under management in tokenized form have grown 140%. Solana supporters argue it is currently the only blockchain fast enough to support mainstream, global asset tokenization.
Key differences between Solana, Bitcoin, and Ethereum
A notable difference among Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana is Solana’s relatively small size.
As of September 7, 2025, their respective market caps are: Bitcoin $2.22 trillion, Ethereum $519 billion, Solana $116 billion. In other words, Solana is just 1/20 the size of Bitcoin and less than 1/4 the size of Ethereum.
In terms of blockchain scale, even relatively modest capital inflows into Solana could have a significant impact on its price. For example, Forward Industries’ planned $1.6 billion purchase of SOL is equivalent, on a proportional basis, to a $33 billion Bitcoin purchase. However, this advantage is partially offset by Solana’s higher annual inflation rate (~4.3%), compared to Bitcoin’s 0.8% and Ethereum’s 0.5%.
Even so, Solana remains highly attractive today. My advice: closely monitor Solana’s developments over the coming months.
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