Wall Street's "smart money" makes big bets on Solana: ARK's corporate treasury takes comprehensive position
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Wall Street's "smart money" makes big bets on Solana: ARK's corporate treasury takes comprehensive position
When Wall Street gets serious, the rules of the game change.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor | cole, Baihua Blockchain
In the world of crypto, capital flows are always the most honest language. While retail investors are still obsessing over the next 100x MeMe coin, a deeper and more powerful undercurrent of capital is quietly reshaping the market landscape. This force comes from top-tier Wall Street investment institutions—the so-called "smart money" known for their calmness and rationality, managing trillions in assets.
And their new favorite is Solana (SOL).
This is not just another tired rehash of the "Ethereum killer" narrative, nor a short-lived speculative frenzy. It's a carefully orchestrated strategic rotation—an intentional reallocation of assets by institutional investors as the crypto market matures.
01 Four Ironclad Signs of Institutional Adoption
The best way to prove a capital rotation is to show actual cash moving:
1) ETP funds continuously "sucking in" capital, with 21 weeks of net inflows
According to a report released in September 2025 by CoinShares, a leading digital asset management firm, investment products focused on Solana have recorded net inflows for 21 consecutive weeks. Year-to-date, the total cumulative net inflow into these products has reached $1.16 billion. For an emerging high-growth asset, such sustained buying pressure over months is the strongest evidence of long-term institutional confidence.
This "capital magnet" effect is global. In Canada, 3iQ’s Solana Staking ETF (ticker: SOLQ) has surpassed C$300 million in assets under management (AUM), becoming the dominant player in that market. In Europe, established issuers like VanEck and 21Shares have already launched multiple Solana ETP products, some of which even include staking yield features—providing institutions with a convenient path to passive income.
2) ARK Invest’s active move: public portfolio rebalancing
If continuous ETP inflows reflect general market sentiment, then the public rebalancing by top active funds reveals the strategic intentions of the most forward-thinking investors.
In April 2025, funds under ARK Invest began systematically selling their Bitcoin ETF holdings and aggressively purchasing shares of Canada’s 3iQ Solana Staking ETF (SOLQ). Within just two trading days, ARK spent over $10 million, accumulating nearly 1 million shares of SOLQ.
This was far more than simple portfolio rebalancing—it was an active decision based on clear investment logic. ARK not only sees growth potential in Solana but also values its "yield-bearing" nature through staking. Moreover, ARK entrusted its fund’s Solana validator operations to SOL Strategies, a professional firm with publicly listed company backing—indicating deep involvement in securing and maintaining Solana’s network stability, going beyond passive financial investment.
3) The rise of the "Solana version of MicroStrategy": a new corporate treasury narrative
Remember how MicroStrategy pioneered the "Bitcoinization of corporate treasuries" by continuously buying and holding Bitcoin? The same story is now unfolding on Solana.
In September 2025, publicly traded Forward Industries announced a $1.6 billion SOL investment plan as part of its strategic treasury diversification—and this move received backing from top-tier crypto VCs including Multicoin Capital, Galaxy Digital, and Jump Crypto.
These companies don’t just buy SOL; they stake it to earn yield, effectively locking large amounts of tokens out of circulation. On-chain data shows that as of September 2025, at least 17 institutional entities collectively hold over 11.73 million SOL, valued at $2.9 billion, representing nearly 2.04% of the circulating supply.
4) The final step toward a U.S. spot ETF: the countdown before explosion
If the above evidence represents the "vanguard" of smart money, then the approval of a U.S. spot Solana ETF will be the "general offensive signal" that opens the floodgates for mainstream Wall Street capital.
Currently, Wall Street giants including VanEck, Bitwise, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, and Grayscale have all submitted applications for spot Solana ETFs to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Although the SEC has repeatedly delayed decisions, market analysts widely predict a very high likelihood of approval before the end of 2025.
The strong anticipation of this event is already influencing market behavior. Even after news broke of the SEC delaying its decision, SOL’s price demonstrated remarkable resilience—indicating investor confidence in the eventual outcome.
These four pieces of evidence interlock perfectly, painting a clear picture: institutional capital is flowing into the Solana ecosystem systematically and continuously through ETPs, active funds, and corporate treasuries.
And once the U.S. spot ETF "shoe drops," this capital feast will officially enter its climax.
02 Why Solana?
Capital never moves without reason. Wall Street’s smart money chose Solana because it demonstrates unique and irreplaceable advantages in technical architecture, ecosystem vitality, and market trends.
Advantage 1: Performance Beast—The Ultimate Experience of Monolithic Architecture
Imagine one superhighway with 65 lanes bustling with traffic, versus a city road network where you must pass countless toll booths and interchanges to get anywhere. This is the fundamental architectural difference between Solana and many other blockchains.
Solana uses a "monolithic" architecture, aiming for extreme speed and throughput on a single blockchain layer. Its unique "Proof of History" consensus mechanism enables parallel transaction processing—like that multi-lane superhighway. The result is staggering performance:
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Ultra-high throughput: theoretical peak exceeding 65,000 transactions per second (TPS), with stable daily operations between 3,000–5,000 TPS.
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Lightning speed: final transaction confirmation in under 3 seconds—nearly instant.
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Extremely low cost: average transaction fee around $0.00025, negligible for practical purposes.
For use cases requiring massive, high-frequency, low-value transactions—such as payments, gaming, social media, and IoT—Solana offers unmatched user and developer experience. As noted in a Grayscale Research report, Solana achieves high performance on a single layer, avoiding the "liquidity fragmentation and cumbersome user experience" seen in multi-layer solutions. This architectural simplicity and efficiency form the core of its technical appeal.
Advantage 2: Ecosystem Gravity—Dominance in Three High-Growth Sectors
If exceptional performance is Solana’s "hardware," then its thriving application ecosystem is its "software." Leveraging its technical strengths, Solana has established absolute leadership in three emerging sectors with immense growth potential.
1) DePIN
DePIN is hailed as the next trillion-dollar sector, aiming to use blockchain incentives to enable users to co-build and share real-world infrastructure (e.g., wireless networks, map data, energy grids). These applications require processing millions of microtransactions, demanding extremely high performance and low costs. Solana is one of the few public chains capable of meeting these needs. As a result, leading projects in this space—including Helium (decentralized 5G), Hivemapper (decentralized mapping), and Render (decentralized GPU rendering)—have either migrated to or built directly on Solana, collectively creating over $10 billion in market value.
2) DeFi
Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) on Solana demonstrate astonishing capital efficiency. Data shows that from late 2024 to early 2025, DEX trading volume on Solana frequently accounted for the vast majority of global volume, sometimes exceeding 80%. This means each dollar locked in Solana’s DeFi ecosystem generates significantly more economic activity than on other chains—a key indicator of a healthy and vibrant financial ecosystem.
While the majority of trading volume is driven by MeMe coins, we cannot deny the sheer level of activity Solana experiences during MeMe super cycles.
3) Payments
When traditional financial giants choose a blockchain for their future payment networks, it serves as the strongest possible endorsement. Visa and PayPal, the two titans of payments, have both chosen Solana to launch their stablecoin and payment initiatives—precisely because of its ability to handle large-scale transactions quickly and cheaply.
03 Wall Street’s Investment Logic: The Art of Valuing Solana
Having understood Solana’s technical and ecosystem strengths, we must now examine how investors assess its value and incorporate it into portfolios.
1) The allure of high beta
For institutional investors seeking outsized returns, one of Solana’s most compelling quantitative arguments lies in its relatively small market cap. As of Q3 2025, Solana’s market cap stood at approximately $119.4 billion, compared to Bitcoin’s $2.2 trillion.
Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise, proposed a brilliant "capital amplification" theory: due to this massive size disparity, the same amount of capital inflow will have a much greater price impact on Solana than on Bitcoin. He calculated that a $1.6 billion purchase of SOL could have a market impact equivalent to a $33 billion purchase of BTC.
This makes Solana a high-beta asset. During bull markets, when the entire crypto market benefits from capital inflows, allocating a portion to Solana can potentially yield returns far above the market average—an irresistible proposition for performance-driven fund managers.
2) The appeal of "yield-bearing assets"
In a global macro environment of low or even negative interest rates, yield-generating "income-producing assets" are highly sought after. Solana’s Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism offers holders an attractive staking yield.
Currently, Solana’s native staking annual yield is around 7.16%. For institutions holding SOL long-term, this means not only potential capital appreciation but also a steady stream of "interest" income denominated in SOL. This is precisely why ARK Invest opted for the staking-enabled SOLQ ETF rather than a standard ETF. This dual "asset + yield" characteristic greatly enhances Solana’s attractiveness as a long-term investment.
3) The "Nasdaq of digital assets"
Wall Street loves simple, clear narratives with room for imagination. Solana delivers just that: it doesn’t aim to be the "digital gold" (like Bitcoin), nor the "global settlement layer" for finance, but rather the "Nasdaq of on-chain consumer economies."
This positioning is precise. Nasdaq is home to the world’s most innovative, high-growth tech companies. Similarly, thanks to its high performance, low cost, and superior user experience, Solana is becoming the go-to platform for all consumer-facing, high-frequency on-chain applications—such as gaming, social media, payments, and DePIN. This narrative tells investors: investing in Solana is investing in the gateway for the next billion users entering Web3, and in the future of the entire on-chain consumer economy.
4) The "Made in America" label
In an era increasingly focused on technological sovereignty and supply chain security, a project’s "nationality" is beginning to matter to institutions. Solana holds a potential advantage not yet fully recognized by the market: it is "Made in America."
Solana Labs is a U.S.-based company, founded by elite engineers from Qualcomm. Its ecosystem maintains close ties with top American VCs like Multicoin, Jump, and Galaxy. As the new U.S. administration adopts a more pro-crypto stance and emphasizes keeping technological innovation domestic, Solana’s "homegrown" identity may bring unexpected regulatory and political tailwinds. For institutional capital seeking long-term certainty, this is undoubtedly a significant plus.
04 Summary
The institutional capital rotation into Solana is not only transforming Solana’s own destiny but also profoundly shaping the future of the entire crypto market.
Of course, the road ahead is never perfectly smooth. Solana faces its own challenges. Despite over 15 months of uninterrupted uptime since early 2024, past occasional network outages remain a concern for investors. Additionally, its high hardware requirements for validators continue to spark debate about network centralization.
Yet, judging by Wall Street’s actions, these risks appear to be priced in. What institutions see is an ecosystem that has iterated through adversity and grown stronger, a future giant that has already achieved clear product-market fit and is now being systematically positioned by smart money.
The conclusion is simple: when Wall Street gets serious, the rules of the game change. And this time, their focus is Solana.
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