Bitwise: Solana will usher in explosive market growth

Author: Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer, Bitwise; Translated by: Golden Finance

Over the past 18 months, the cryptocurrency "recipe" for achieving high returns has been clear: Combining a portion of ETP inflows with strong corporate treasury purchases yields strong returns

Bitcoin has followed this recipe, rising from $40,000 in January 2024 to around $112,000 today. Ethereum employed the same strategy in April 2025, and its price has since tripled to $4,500.

That this "recipe" works is unsurprising; it's essentially the classic laws of supply and demand at work.

● Since January 11, 2024, the Bitcoin network has produced 322,681 Bitcoins, while ETPs and corporate purchases have exceeded 1.1 million.

● Since April 15, 2025, the Ethereum network has produced 388,568 ETH, while ETPs and corporate purchases have reached 7.4 million.

When demand exceeds supply, prices typically rise.

Why do I think SOL will be the next target?

Solana has the conditions to follow the above path Several issuers—including Bitwise, Grayscale, VanEck, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, Invesco/Galaxy, and Canary Capital—have filed applications to launch spot Solana ETPs. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is scheduled to rule on these applications on or before October 10, 2025, suggesting that several issuers could launch spot Solana ETPs in the fourth quarter of 2025. Meanwhile, over the weekend, three major firms—Galaxy Digital, Jump Crypto, and Multicoin Capital—committed $1.65 billion in cash and stablecoins to Forward Industries, a large, publicly traded Solana treasury. Upon completion of the transactions, the new company will begin acquiring and staking Solana tokens and aim to achieve outsized returns. Notably, Forward Industries has appointed Kyle Samani, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, as Chairman. Multicoin was one of Solana's earliest investors, and Samani has been one of the company's most articulate and vocal promoters (you can read Multicoin's latest investment thesis on Solana here). Michael Saylor played a key role in promoting Bitcoin as Executive Chairman of Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy, and Tom Lee has made similar contributions to Ethereum as Chairman of Ethereum treasury firm BitMine. If Samani can similarly convey Solana's value proposition on CNBC, Bloomberg, and Fox Business, it will help drive a flywheel of investor demand. What is Solana's core appeal? Of course, the mere existence of ETPs and treasury companies doesn't guarantee investor buy-in. Investor interest in these instruments must be based on fundamental reasons. A typical bullish argument is that, despite the approval of an Ethereum ETF in June 2024, Ethereum didn't truly take off until April 2025, as market interest in stablecoins intensified and investors began to focus on the leading blockchain in the stablecoin space. So, what is Solana's core appeal? Solana is an Ethereum competitor, a programmable blockchain capable of supporting a variety of use cases, including stablecoins, tokenized assets, and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. Solana's biggest draw is its ability to process far more transactions per second than Ethereum, while also offering extremely low transaction costs (less than $0.01 per transaction) and fast finality confirmation times. In fact, the blockchain recently passed a major technical upgrade proposal that reduces transaction finality time from approximately 12 seconds to 150 milliseconds—a speed comparable to the blink of an eye. Once the upgrade goes live, Solana will become one of the fastest blockchains in the world. Solana achieves this performance thanks to its fundamentally different technical design from Ethereum—it doesn't rely on a Layer 2 network, making the blockchain simpler and easier to use for users. Critics argue that Solana's high performance comes with a key trade-off: lower decentralization and more fragile network stability. Despite this, Solana has successfully attracted a large number of users. Among programmable blockchains, Solana ranks third in stablecoin liquidity (after Ethereum and Tron) and fourth in tokenized assets. And its growth is rapid: the amount of tokenized assets under management (AUM) has increased by 140% so far this year. Solana's supporters believe that among blockchains that are rapidly achieving large-scale global support for the tokenization of mainstream assets, Solana is the only one that has reached this milestone. A key difference between Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana is a significant and noteworthy difference: Solana's relatively small market capitalization. As of September 7th, Bitcoin's market capitalization was $2.22 trillion, Ethereum's was $519 billion, and Solana's was just $116 billion. In other words, Solana's market capitalization is only one-twentieth that of Bitcoin and less than one-quarter that of Ethereum. Given the scale of blockchain market capitalization, even a relatively small influx of funds into Solana could have a significant impact on its price. For example, the $1.6 billion in SOL Forward Industries plans to purchase would be equivalent to a $33 billion purchase in the Bitcoin market. However, this impact will be partially offset by Solana's higher annual inflation rate (approximately 4.3%)—Bitcoin and Ethereum's annual inflation rates are approximately 0.8% and 0.5%, respectively. Overall, however, Solana's current layout remains attractive. My advice: Keep a close eye on Solana's developments in the coming months.