Morgan Stanley now holds $29.9 million in Bitwise’s Solana staking ETF, a significant improve within the agency’s oblique publicity to SOL throughout the first quarter of 2025. Within the context of conventional finance touching Solana-specific merchandise, it’s one of many bigger public positions on report.
The transfer is a part of a broader push by Morgan Stanley into crypto-linked exchange-traded merchandise. It comes at a time when SOL itself has been having a tough yr, buying and selling round $82.48 and sitting roughly 38% under the place it began 2025.
Morgan Stanley’s rising crypto playbook
The Bitwise ETF place isn’t an remoted wager. On January 6, 2025, Morgan Stanley Funding Administration filed two S-1 registration statements with the SEC: one for a Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Belief, the opposite for a Morgan Stanley Solana Belief.
The Solana belief is described as a passive automobile designed to trace the value of SOL, the native token of the Solana blockchain. The Bitcoin belief operates on the identical precept, simply with Bitcoin because the underlying asset.
Morgan Stanley solely started permitting its wealth advisors to pitch Bitcoin ETFs to eligible purchasers in mid-2024. The leap from “okay, you possibly can point out Bitcoin” to “we’re submitting our personal Solana belief” occurred remarkably quick by Wall Road requirements.
Why Solana, and why now
For Morgan Stanley, the staking part of the Bitwise ETF provides one other dimension. Solana’s proof-of-stake mechanism permits token holders to earn yield by taking part in community validation. A staking ETF passes a few of that yield by way of to traders, making the product extra enticing than a easy spot publicity automobile.
What this implies for traders
The S-1 filings for Morgan Stanley’s personal Bitcoin and Solana trusts are nonetheless working by way of the SEC’s overview course of. If accepted, they might give the agency’s advisory community in-house merchandise to suggest, a major improve from directing purchasers to third-party ETFs like Bitwise’s providing.
SOL’s 38% decline this yr is a reminder that institutional curiosity doesn’t insulate an asset from volatility. Solana’s community has confronted criticism for centralization issues and previous outages, elements that might weigh on regulatory selections or institutional threat committees.
