Morgan Stanley parked $29.9 million into Bitwise’s Solana staking ETF during the first quarter of 2025.
The Bitwise product Morgan Stanley chose isn’t a plain-vanilla spot fund. It’s a Solana staking ETF, which means it holds actual SOL tokens while simultaneously staking a significant portion of them to generate yield. Bitwise targets roughly 70% of the fund’s holdings for staking.
In English: investors get price exposure to Solana plus a stream of staking rewards, similar to earning interest on a savings account while the underlying asset can still appreciate. It’s a two-for-one value proposition that doesn’t really exist in the Bitcoin ETF world, since Bitcoin doesn’t have a native staking mechanism.
Combined assets under management for Bitwise’s and Fidelity’s Solana products have surpassed $1 billion.
Morgan Stanley’s bigger Solana playbook
The bank filed with the SEC on January 6, 2025, to launch its own Solana Trust, alongside a Bitcoin Trust. Both filings are still pending regulatory approval.
Standard Chartered analysts have set a year-end price target for SOL at $250, citing new developments and growth metrics on the network.
The risk side of the equation hasn’t disappeared. Solana’s network has historically experienced outages that would be unacceptable for traditional financial infrastructure. Regulatory clarity around staking products remains a moving target, and the SEC’s decision on Morgan Stanley’s pending trust filings could go either way.
The $1 billion combined AUM milestone for Bitwise and Fidelity’s Solana funds suggests that capital is arriving steadily, not in a single speculative wave.
