Matthew Sigel, VanEck’s head of digital assets research, confirmed speculation that the firm’s Solana spot ETF proposal points to Donald Trump winning the US presidency.
The deadline for VanEck’s application has been set for March 2025, which would be well ahead of the aftermath of the US presidential elections in November.
Sigel simply responded with a simple:
“Can confirm.”
The analysts said the chances of approval for each ETF are “close to zero” if a Democratic victory leaves Joe Biden in office, and “better… but not guaranteed” if Trump wins the election. Trump would likely appoint a new SEC chairman to replace the agency’s current chairman, Gary Gensler.
Share surveillance
Another issue seen as a hurdle for potential Solana ETFs is the lack of a futures market on CME, which experts say was a key factor in spotting Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs getting the regulatory green light.
Specifically, Grayscale argued in its case against the SEC that the oversight sharing agreements for the CME Bitcoin futures were replicable for the proposed spot ETF and were sufficient to detect and prevent fraudulent activity.
The company claimed that the SEC failed to provide a reasonable explanation for treating spot Bitcoin ETFs differently than futures ETFs in terms of oversight sharing agreements.
The case essentially revolved around whether the SEC’s demand for a regulatory sharing agreement specific to a spot Bitcoin ETF was justified and whether the SEC consistently applied its standards to different types of Bitcoin-related ETFs.
Because the SEC has now approved spot ETFs for Bitcoin and Ethereum, Sigel believes VanEck will not need to demonstrate a CME futures market around Solana to acquire its ETF. He previously stated:
“Monitoring sharing agreements with spot crypto exchanges could eliminate the need for CME futures.”
Bloomberg agrees that SSA is sufficient
Bloomberg analysts agreed that an SSA “should be sufficient,” but concluded that VanEck’s approach “will only work if there is new leadership at the SEC and/or a literal act of Congress.”
They noted that previous ETF filings, most notably BlackRock’s June 2023 spot Bitcoin ETF filing, included surveillance sharing agreements (SSAs) with Coinbase, prompting other companies to implement similar clauses. However, the analysts added that the agreements ultimately proved unnecessary.
The analysts also said the SEC’s ongoing securities lawsuits against multiple exchanges, including Coinbase and Kraken, are also complicating SSAs between exchanges and ETF issuers.
