“Solana and Cardano next in line for ETFs” — Tether Co-Founder

TL;DR

• Over the past 6 months Cardano has underperformed, while Solana has been labelled an unregistered security by the SEC — so while we’d love to see it, we’re not holding our breath.

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You read that headline right.

Tether co-founder, William Quigley (helluva name), is predicting that Solana and Cardano are next in line for ETFs.

Why? Because “Wall Street is greedy.”

Which isn’t the worst analysis we’ve heard before…but it feels a little…off.

Over the past 6 months, Cardano has underperformed compared to other major altcoins, while Solana has been labelled an unregistered security by the SEC.

(As much as we’d like to see it — Wall Street tends to avoid underperformance and regulatory red tape).

Regardless of the token in question, we’re not pinning any hopes on seeing new crypto ETFs for any of the leading crypto projects in the near future.

Because to have a ‘spot’ ETF (where buyers purchase shares in a fund, then the fund uses it to buy crypto), the cryptocurrency needs to first have a futures ETF (where speculators can bet on the future price of the cryptocurrency, without the fund actually buying/holding the coins/tokens).

That alone takes a good amount of time.

Then the SEC will want to see a year or more of trading take place on the futures ETF, to make sure its free of manipulation.

And even then they can sit on their hands and reject spot ETF applications on small technicalities if they so choose.

So our guess is:

Yes, many of the major cryptocurrencies will have US-based spot ETFs, which will attract new investment and (hopefully) push prices up.

…but it’s going to take a minute.

Wall Street’s greed will need to battle with the SEC’s slow and begrudging acceptance of crypto.

And if the bear market hits in the next 12-18 months (as expected), Wall Street’s obsession with crypto will likely wane until things pick up again.

Patience is a virtue 🧘