Solana has tanked since spot solana ETFs launched, despite the funds only recording positive flows to date
Solana’s ETF inflows are a supportive signal, but they aren’t the marginal price setter for the token, one expert explained.
Solana spot ETFs have yet to record weekly outflows since their listing, yet the price of the token has been in a downswing.
Trading at the $117 level, solana is down 37.8% from October, when the funds launched, astonishing some since the investment vehicles drew in $884.4 million in cumulative inflows and haven’t recorded a weekly outflow.
Solana’s ETF inflows are a supportive signal, but they aren’t the marginal price setter for the token, according to Simon Shockey, an analyst at Delphi Digital. “The ETF wrapper is still small versus the market that actually determines the clearing price — especially perpetuals — where leverage, funding, and liquidations can overwhelm a steady but modest ETF bid,” Shockey told Sherwood News.
In the last 24 hours, about $29.8 million worth of long positions were liquidated across a number of centralized and decentralized exchanges, with the largest single liquidation standing at $401,799, data from CoinGlass shows.
“Even this month, we’re talking about single-digit millions of daily net flow into SOL ETFs, while SOL trades billions per day,” Shockey added. The token’s 24-hour trading volume is roughly $5.3 billion across all venues tracked by data analytics firm CoinGecko. Meanwhile, traders on crypto perpetuals exchange Hyperliquid generated $430 million in 24-hour trading volume for the token.
Inflows don’t translate one-to-one into immediate spot buying pressure. “ETF flows are primary-market creations; a lot of trading happens in the ETF shares themselves without touching spot SOL, and authorized participants can source liquidity over time, use inventory, or hedge with derivatives,” Shockey said.
Proceeding cautiously
The Delphi Digital analyst also said market participants on the supply side have reasons to be cautious, pointing to the “known drop of previously locked SOL from the FTX estate auctions.”
In 2024, FTX’s bankruptcy administrators sold about two-thirds of a $2.6 billion stash of solana tokens at a cost basis of $64 to institutional players such as Galaxy Trading, per a Bloomberg report. These tokens are subject to a vesting schedule.
Neptune Digital also acquired locked solana from the FTX estate. The Block reported that 20% unlocked in March 2025, with the remainder unlocking monthly until 2028. “While unlock doesn’t equal sell, it’s a persistent overhang narrative that can cap rallies because traders anticipate periodic distribution/hedging,” Shockey said.
