When Wall Street gets serious, the rules of the game change.

Author | Cole, Blockchain Simplified

In the world of cryptocurrency, the flow of capital is always the most honest language. While retail investors are still going crazy over the next hundredfold MeMe coin, a deeper and more powerful capital undercurrent is quietly changing the market landscape. This force comes from the top investment institutions on Wall Street—those managing trillions of dollars, known for their calmness and rationality, the "smart money."

And their new favorite is Solana (SOL).

This is not just another cliché of an "Ethereum killer," nor is it a fleeting speculative frenzy. This is a carefully planned strategic rotation, a thoughtful asset reallocation by institutional investors as the cryptocurrency market matures.

01 Four Strong Evidence of Institutional Entry

To prove that a capital rotation is occurring, the most compelling way is to show the flow of real money:

1) ETP funds continue to "suck in capital," with 21 weeks of net inflow

According to a report released by the authoritative digital asset management company CoinShares in September 2025, investment products focused on Solana have recorded net inflows for 21 consecutive weeks. Since the beginning of the year, the cumulative net inflow of these products has reached as high as $1.16 billion. For an emerging high-growth asset, this sustained buying pressure over several months is the strongest proof that institutional investors are optimistic in the long term.

This "capital absorption" capability is global. In Canada, the Solana Staking ETF (code: SOLQ) issued by 3iQ has surpassed 300 million Canadian dollars in assets under management (AUM), becoming a market leader. In Europe, well-known issuers like VanEck and 21Shares have already laid out various Solana ETP products, some of which even include staking yield features, providing institutions with a convenient way to earn passive income.

2) ARK Invest's proactive moves and public reallocation

If the continuous inflow of ETPs represents the general market sentiment, then the public reallocation of top actively managed funds reveals the strategic intentions of cutting-edge investors.

In April 2025, ARK's funds were systematically selling their holdings in Bitcoin ETFs and instead were heavily buying the Canadian 3iQ Solana Staking ETF (SOLQ). In just two trading days, ARK spent over $10 million, accumulating nearly 1 million shares of SOLQ.

This is not a simple asset rebalancing but a proactive decision based on clear investment logic. ARK not only sees the growth potential of Solana but also values its ability to generate staking income. Additionally, ARK has entrusted the Solana validator business of its funds to a professional firm with a public company background, SOL Strategies, indicating that it is deeply involved in maintaining the security and stable operation of the Solana network, rather than just being a passive financial investor.

3) The rise of the "Solana version of MicroStrategy," a new narrative for corporate treasuries

Do you remember how MicroStrategy pioneered the "corporate treasury Bitcoinization" by continuously buying and holding Bitcoin? Now, a similar story is unfolding on Solana.

In September 2025, publicly traded Forward Industries announced a SOL investment plan of up to $1.6 billion as part of its strategic treasury diversification, and this plan has the support of top crypto venture capital firms like Multicoin Capital, Galaxy Digital, and Jump Crypto.

These companies are not only buying SOL but will also generate income through staking, effectively locking a large number of tokens out of the circulating market. On-chain data shows that as of September 2025, at least 17 institutional entities collectively held over 11.73 million SOL, worth $2.9 billion, accounting for nearly 2.04% of the circulating supply.

4) The final countdown before the approval of the U.S. spot ETF

If the above evidence represents the vanguard of "smart money," then the approval of the U.S. spot Solana ETF will be the "all-out signal" to open the floodgates of mainstream Wall Street capital.

Currently, Wall Street giants, including VanEck, Bitwise, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, and Grayscale, have submitted applications for a spot Solana ETF to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Although the SEC has repeatedly delayed its decision, market analysts generally predict a high likelihood of approval by the end of 2025.

The strong anticipation of this event has already begun to influence market behavior. Even after the SEC announced the delay in its decision, SOL's price still showed strong resilience, indicating that investors are confident in the eventual outcome.

These four pieces of evidence are interconnected, collectively painting a clear picture: institutional capital is systematically and continuously flowing into the Solana ecosystem through various channels such as ETPs, active funds, and corporate treasuries.

Once the "shoe" of the U.S. spot ETF drops, this capital feast will officially reach its climax.

02 Why Solana?

The flow of capital is never without reason. The "smart money" on Wall Street chooses Solana because it demonstrates unique and irreplaceable advantages in technical architecture, ecological vitality, and market trends.

Advantage 1: Performance Monster—The Ultimate Experience of Monolithic Architecture

Imagine one highway with continuous traffic and 65 lanes, while another requires navigating countless toll booths and interchanges to connect. This is the fundamental architectural difference between Solana and many other blockchains.

Solana adopts a "monolithic" architecture, aiming to achieve extreme speed and throughput at a single blockchain layer. It achieves parallel processing of transactions through its unique "Proof of History" consensus mechanism, much like that multi-lane superhighway. This brings astonishing performance data:

• Ultra-high throughput: Theoretical peak exceeding 65,000 transactions per second (TPS), with stable daily operation at 3,000-5,000 TPS.

• Lightning-fast speed: Transaction final confirmation time is less than 3 seconds, almost instantaneous.

• Extremely low cost: The average transaction fee is only about $0.00025, negligible.

For application scenarios that require handling massive, high-frequency, low-value transactions—such as payments, gaming, social networking, and the Internet of Things—Solana's architecture provides an unparalleled user and developer experience. As noted in a report by Grayscale Research, Solana achieves high performance at a single layer, avoiding the "liquidity fragmentation and more cumbersome user experience" brought by other multi-layer solutions. This simplicity and efficiency in architecture is the technical cornerstone of its appeal.

Advantage 2: Ecological Attraction—Seizing Three High-Growth Tracks

If exceptional performance is Solana's "hardware," then its thriving ecological applications are its "software." Leveraging its technical advantages, Solana has established an absolute leadership position in three emerging tracks with significant growth potential.

1) DePIN

DePIN is hailed as the next trillion-dollar track, aiming to use blockchain to incentivize users to co-build and share real-world infrastructure (such as wireless networks, map data, energy networks, etc.). These applications require handling millions of micropayments, placing extremely high demands on network performance and cost. Solana is one of the few public chains capable of meeting this demand. Therefore, leading projects in this field, such as Helium (decentralized 5G network), Hivemapper (decentralized mapping), and Render (decentralized GPU rendering), have either migrated to or been built directly on Solana, collectively creating a market value of over $10 billion.

2) DeFi

Decentralized exchanges (DEX) on Solana demonstrate astonishing capital efficiency. Data shows that from late 2024 to early 2025, DEX trading volume on Solana frequently accounted for a significant portion of the global total, sometimes exceeding 80%. This means that every dollar locked in the Solana DeFi ecosystem has generated more economic activity than on other chains, which is a key indicator of the health and vitality of a financial ecosystem.

Although the vast majority of trading volume is contributed by MeMe, it cannot be denied that the active force of the Solana chain is present during the MeMe supercycle.

3) Payments

When traditional financial giants choose a blockchain to build their future payment networks, it is itself a powerful endorsement. The two giants in the payment field—Visa and PayPal—have both chosen to launch their stablecoin and payment projects on Solana, precisely because of its speed and low-cost advantages in handling large-scale transactions.

03 Wall Street's Investment Logic: The Art of Valuing Solana

Having understood Solana's technical and ecological advantages, we also need to look at it from the investors' perspective to see how they assess Solana's value and incorporate it into their portfolios.

1) The Temptation of High Beta

For institutional investors seeking excess returns, one of the most attractive quantitative arguments for Solana is its relatively small market capitalization. As of the third quarter of 2025, Solana's market cap was approximately $119.4 billion, while Bitcoin's was as high as $2.2 trillion.

Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer of Bitwise, proposed an insightful "capital amplification" theory: due to this massive scale difference, the same amount of capital flowing in will have a far greater impact on Solana's price than on Bitcoin. He calculated that a $1.6 billion purchase of SOL could have a market impact equivalent to a $33 billion purchase of BTC.

This means that Solana is a high Beta asset. In a bull market, when the entire cryptocurrency market is buoyed by capital inflows, allocating a portion of Solana positions is expected to yield returns far exceeding the market average. This is highly tempting for performance-seeking fund managers.

2) The Allure of "Yield-Generating Assets"

In a global macro environment of low or even negative interest rates, "yield-generating assets" that can produce stable cash flow are highly sought after. Solana, through its Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism, offers holders an attractive staking yield.

Currently, Solana's native staking annualized yield is approximately 7.16%. For institutions holding SOL long-term, this means that in addition to the potential for capital appreciation, they can also earn a substantial "interest" income denominated in SOL. This is a key reason why ARK Invest chose to buy the SOLQ ETF with staking functionality rather than a regular ETF. This dual attribute of "asset + yield" greatly enhances Solana's appeal as a long-term investment target.

3) "The Nasdaq of Digital Assets"

Wall Street likes simple, clear, and imaginative stories. Solana happens to provide a perfect narrative: it does not aim to become the "gold" of the digital world (like Bitcoin), nor does it aspire to be the "settlement layer" of global finance, but rather to become the "Nasdaq" of on-chain consumption economy.

This positioning is very precise. Nasdaq is a gathering place for high-tech, high-growth companies worldwide. With its high performance, low cost, and excellent user experience, Solana is becoming the preferred platform for all consumer-facing, high-frequency interactive on-chain applications (such as gaming, social networking, payments, and DePIN). This story tells investors that investing in Solana is investing in the gateway for the next billion users entering Web3, and it is investing in the future of the entire on-chain consumption economy.

4) The "Made in America" Label

In an era that increasingly emphasizes technological sovereignty and supply chain security, the "nationality" of a project has also begun to become part of institutional considerations. Solana has a potential advantage that the market has not yet fully recognized: it is a "Made in America" blockchain.

Solana Labs is a company headquartered in the United States, founded by top engineers from Qualcomm. Its ecosystem is closely related to top U.S. VCs (such as Multicoin, Jump, Galaxy) and institutions. As the new U.S. government shows an increasingly pro-crypto stance and emphasizes keeping technological innovation domestic, Solana's "local" identity may bring it unexpected regulatory and political tailwinds. This is undoubtedly an important plus for institutional capital seeking long-term certainty.

04 Summary

The rotation of institutional capital towards Solana is not only changing Solana's own fate but is also profoundly influencing the future landscape of the entire cryptocurrency market.

Of course, the road to the future is not without its challenges. Solana also faces its own hurdles. Although its network stability has maintained over 15 months of continuous normal operation since early 2024, past sporadic outages remain a thorn in investors' minds. Additionally, its higher validator hardware requirements have led to ongoing discussions about the degree of network centralization.

However, from Wall Street's actions, these risks seem to have been factored into the pricing. What they see is an ecosystem that continues to iterate and grow stronger in adversity, one that has already found a clear product-market fit and is being systematically laid out by "smart money" as a future giant.

The conclusion is simple: when Wall Street gets serious, the rules of the game change. And this time, they have their eyes on Solana.

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