BlackRock Snubs XRP, Solana, Says Only Bitcoin And Ethereum Meet Criteria For Spot ETFs

Solana (SOL) and Ripple’s XRP enthusiasts hoping for a repeat of the Ether (ETH) exchange-traded fund (ETF) launch in the United States were disappointed after BlackRock’s senior ETF executive said Bitcoin and Ethereum are the only cryptocurrencies that meet the criteria for ETFs.

No BlackRock SOL, XRP ETFs In The Near Future

In a Bloomberg interview on Monday, BlackRock’s investment chief for ETF and Index Investments, Samara Cohen, affirmed that the investment giant is not pursuing funds that track other crypto assets like ETH rival Solana and XRP.

Cohen said that while Bitcoin and Ethereum met the minimum expectations of the investment giant for exchange-traded funds, no other digital coin came close.

She also said there are major technical hurdles in bringing other crypto-based ETFs into the market as the appetite for other currency ETFs, including SOL, simply wasn’t there.

“We really look at the investability to see what meets the criteria, what meets the bar to be delivered in an ETF,” Cohen posited in the interview. “For us, both in terms of investability and also what we hear from our clients, Bitcoin and Ethereum definitely meet that bar, but it will be a while before we see anything else.”

Robert Mitchnick, BlackRock’s head of digital assets, recently echoed the sentiment, positing at the Bitcoin 2024 Conference in Nashville, “I don’t think we’re gonna see a long list of crypto ETFs.”

Crypto Market Betting On SOL ETFs

After spot Ethereum ETFs successfully hit the market last week, propelling crypto funds’ weekly trading volume to $14.8 billion, the highest since May, speculation has been on which crypto will march onto Wall Street next to claim the crypto ETF prize. 

Solana has been tipped as the most likely candidate, and in fact, there have been two separate applications for US-listed SOL ETFs by both VanEck and 21Shares.

The speculation that SOL would be next was further bolstered when traditional U.S. fund manager Franklin Templeton touted Solana as an “exciting and major development that we believe will drive the crypto space forward.”

Many crypto proponents are bullish on SOL because it is considered a much faster and cheaper alternative to Ether. However, the absence of Solana CME futures, as there are BTC and ETH, is seen as a significant barrier to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s ability to give its regulatory blessing to a Solana ETF.

Solana has now flipped Binance’s native BNB token by market cap, becoming the fourth-largest cryptocurrency. The sheer size of the token undoubtedly makes it hard for financial giants to ignore it forever.

Meanwhile, the SEC may be dropping its charges against “Third-Party Crypto Asset Securities”, such as SOL, Polygon’s MATIC, and Cardano (ADA), which have been part of its case against crypto exchange Binance, a July 30 filing showed. The SEC alleged that these tokens meet the Howey test, which defines sales of securities as investment contracts.