Solana loses $11.1 million from the US ETFs: here are the reasons

The Solana price prediction for October hangs on one number from the previous day: the US spot ETFs on Solana lost money on net on September 30 instead of taking any in. That ends a run which carried the price through September. The price stands at $117.66, or €104.21, at around 14:47 German time on October 1, after a daily high of $122.60. Over seven days there is still a gain of 4.1 percent, and over 30 days one of 15.3 percent. That contradiction is the real question of the day.

What is behind it can be pinned down in three places: the figures from the fund houses, the rhythm of a network that is switching its consensus in October, and the question of what an investor in Germany can actually do with any of it. All three have a date, and all three have a number.

ETF outflow of $11.1 million: Solana's run of inflows has snapped

On September 30, investors pulled a net $11.10 million out of the American spot ETFs on Solana. The figure comes from SoSoValue and was reported by Chaincatcher among others. The largest single item was the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF with an outflow of $8.94 million, while the Fidelity Solana Fund ETF took in $2.77 million. A second tally for the same day arrives at around $12.5 million and additionally names outflows of roughly $3.2 million each at the VanEck and Morgan Stanley products. The range of $11.1 million to $12.5 million stands here as it is, because the two houses draw their boundaries differently.

Spot ETF means the fund holds the coin itself and not merely a futures contract on it. An outflow therefore means the fund has redeemed units and given up SOL to do so. That is genuine selling pressure and not a bookkeeping entry.

The contrast with the preceding days is what makes the number interesting in the first place. In the week to September 29, the same products took in a net $188 million, their highest weekly figure since launch. On September 25 alone, $86.7 million flowed in, the strongest single day of the year. Cumulatively, around $1.6 billion in net inflows stand on the books since trading began, and assets under management come to just under $1.96 billion. Measured against that, $11 million is tiny. The message lies in the sign rather than the size: the first red day after a run forces anyone who bet on the run to examine their assumption.

Anyone wanting to understand how these products can be reached from Germany at all will find the market overview in our guide to crypto ETFs in Germany. Further down is the reason an American spot ETF is as a rule out of reach for a German brokerage account.

Solana price between $117 and $122: the 120 mark as the seam

The daily range on October 1 runs from $117.08 to $122.60 according to CoinGecko. The price has therefore touched 120 and given it up again, repeatedly in this week. The 24-hour loss comes to 3.0 percent. Market capitalisation stands at $69.2 billion, and turnover over the past 24 hours at $3.9 billion.

The price is 59.9 percent short of the all-time high of $293.31 from January 19, 2025. That number belongs in every Solana price prediction, because it sets the yardstick: the current advance is a recovery inside a multi-year decline and not a continuation of the old trend. Anyone counting on a swift return to triple-digit percentage gains is counting against that gap.

In practical terms: 120 is no magic line, but the place where supply met demand three times most recently. A daily close above it would make the area around 122.60 the next test. Should the price fall below the daily low of $117.08, the next notable floor lies where the price stood before the advance of the past four weeks, so in the area around $110.

Alpenglow in October: finality from 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds

The second half of the answer lies in the network itself. Solana is switching to the new Alpenglow consensus in October with version Agave 4.3. Finality is the point from which a transaction can practically no longer be reversed. Today that takes around 12.8 seconds; with Alpenglow it is meant to become around 150 milliseconds. The official overview sits on Solana's upgrade page.

The date is softer than it sounds. Cryptoticker reported on September 28 that the activation did not come about on that day; the head of research at Anza spoke there of a rush that failed to materialise. The switch runs over epoch boundaries in October rather than over a date in the calendar. For the price question that matters, because every participant who bet on a fixed date has to readjust their plan.

Frankendancer loses support: the migration window hits validators

The switch ends support for Frankendancer, the transitional client from the Firedancer team at Jump Crypto. A validator client is the software an operator uses to take part in consensus and confirm blocks. Firedancer is meant to support Alpenglow from the start, with one exception: the client does not cover the brief migration window of a few thousand slots. Operators have to switch to the Agave client for that span and back again afterwards.

On top of that comes the Validator Admission Ticket, or VAT. It checks an operator's key before that operator may vote under the new procedure. As long as too few operators have deposited their keys, the switch does not happen.

Anyone who has delegated their SOL runs no validator themselves, but depends on one. If the chosen operator drops out during the window or misses the switch, the rewards stop for that time. A look at your own validator's readiness is therefore worth more over the coming weeks than it usually is.

Epoch 1046 was 97 percent through: when a stake really comes free

For this article, the state of the network was queried directly at the public mainnet node at around 12:48 UTC on October 1. The result: the network stood in epoch 1046, of which 419,958 of 432,000 slots had been worked through, so 97.2 percent. Around 12,000 slots, or about 80 minutes, remained until the epoch change.

An epoch is the network's accounting period and covers 432,000 slots, in practice a good two days. That size is the reason staking on Solana does not work like an instant-access savings account: deactivate your stake and the coins only come free at the end of the current epoch, not immediately. Anyone who wants to sell on a particular date therefore has to allow for the lead time and not the day itself.

The same mechanics explain why Alpenglow has no calendar date. The switch happens at an epoch boundary, and that boundary moves with the actual block time. For October's milestones, the epoch number is therefore the more precise quantity than the date.

Staking yield of 4.8 percent gross: 440 million SOL are staked

The same query supplies the order of magnitude of the yield. 671 active validators took part in consensus, and twelve more counted as delinquent. Together, 440.5 million SOL stood staked. With 588.0 million SOL in circulation, that corresponds to a stake ratio of 74.9 percent, one of the highest figures among the large networks.

The network's emission rate in the same epoch was 3.62 percent a year. That emission is distributed across the staked amount and not across the whole circulating supply. From this follows a gross yield of around 4.8 percent a year, from which the validator's fee is deducted; single-digit percentages of the reward are usual there. What arrives at the end therefore sits closer to 4.4 than to 5 percent.

That number is the quiet counterpart to the price. Hold SOL and stake it, and you earn something even when the price moves sideways. Invest through a product on an exchange, by contrast, and you have to check whether the staking rewards land in the product or stay with the issuer. Our comparison of the best staking platforms gives an overview of providers and terms.

Staking rewards on the tax return: the 256 euro threshold and the moment of receipt

For investors in Germany, a duty hangs on those 4.8 percent. The tax authorities treat income from passive staking as other income under section 22 number 3 of the Income Tax Act. The authoritative text is the federal finance ministry's circular of March 6, 2025. Tax falls due at the moment of receipt, at the market value of the coins received on that day, at your personal tax rate.

A threshold of 256 euros a year applies to this. A threshold is not an allowance: break it and you pay tax on the full amount and not merely on the excess. At a gross yield of 4.8 percent, the limit is arithmetically reached at around 5,300 euros of stake volume, so at a SOL price of €104.21 at about 51 SOL.

A different provision applies at a later sale. Private disposals are governed by section 23 of the Income Tax Act: after a holding period of more than one year the gain stays free of tax, and below that a threshold of 1,000 euros a calendar year applies to all private disposals taken together. On the current view of the authorities, staking does not extend that one-year period.

In practice this means the date of receipt, the amount and the price of every single reward belong in your records, and on an ongoing basis. Reconstruct it in March of the following year and you are estimating. Our comparison of crypto tax tools shows which tools keep that ledger automatically.

US spot ETF versus crypto ETP on the German exchange

The ETF figures from the United States move the price, but they are not a route to buying for a German brokerage account. An American spot ETF does not come with a key information document under the European PRIIPs regulation, and without that document brokers in the EU are as a rule not allowed to sell the product to retail investors. The record week changes nothing about that.

The route in Germany therefore runs through two doors. One is exchange-traded notes that track the price and trade on Xetra and other German venues. There, the total expense ratio, the spread and the question of whether staking rewards are credited to the product are what count. The other door is direct purchase through a trading venue licensed in the EU, since the MiCA regulation with a single authorisation. Which providers charge which fees is set out in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

The difference is not only a question of cost. The one-year period from section 23 applies only to a direct purchase, and only there can you stake yourself. A note in a brokerage account follows the rules for investment income instead, with withholding tax on sale and without the holding-period privilege. Compare the two routes and you are weighing two different tax logics against each other, not just two fee models.

Two scenarios for October: what hangs on $122 and on $110

The following levels come from the daily data measured above and not from somebody else's price target. In the friendly case the ETF inflows return, the switch to Alpenglow runs without a major outage, and the price closes above today's daily high of $122.60. The next area then lies where the price last traded for a longer stretch before this year's correction.

In the unfriendly case the redemptions continue, the migration window brings visible outages at validators, and the price loses today's daily low of $117.08. Attention then falls on the area around $110, where the advance of the past four weeks began. Half of the 15.3 percent gain over 30 days would be given up with it.

Both cases hang on the same observation. The price currently follows the direction of fund flows more closely than the news from the network. The daily flow figure is therefore the quantity that carries a Solana price prediction in October, and the epoch number the quantity that sets the technical date.

Solana price prediction: Your next three steps

1. Read the flow figure daily. A single red day is noise, three red days in a row are a pattern. If you hold Solana through an exchange-traded product, also look at the spread and the total expense ratio; the market overview for that is in our guide to crypto ETFs in Germany.
2. Keep your validator and the epoch in view. Ahead of the migration window it is worth checking whether the chosen operator is running and when the next epoch boundary falls. Anyone wanting to sell on a fixed date deactivates the stake at least one epoch beforehand. Providers' terms and minimum amounts are in the comparison of the best staking platforms.
3. Book the rewards straight away. Every staking credit needs a date, an amount and a price, because the 256 euro threshold hangs on the value at receipt and not on the sale proceeds. Our comparison of crypto tax tools shows which tools handle that as you go.

(As of October 1, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)