Chief investment officer of crypto asset management firm Bitwise, Matt Hougan, thinks Solana will be the Wall Street network of choice for stablecoins and real-world asset tokenization.
“I think Solana is the new Wall Street,” said Hougan, speaking with Solana Labs’ Akshay Rajan on Oct. 2. He added that the Wall Street audiences consider Bitcoin (BTC) “very ephemeral” and “hard to get their heads around.”
They can see what is happening in the stablecoin and tokenization space, and they know that it is going to be “enormously significant,” he said before adding, “Really important people are saying that stablecoins will reinvent payments and tokenization will reinvent stock, bond, commodity, and real estate markets.”
When they look at how to invest, the answer is in the blockchain space, and when they evaluate the blockchain space, “the speed, the throughput, the finality of Solana makes it seem extraordinarily attractive.”
Hougan cited improvements from 400 microseconds to 150 microseconds in settlement speed, saying that this makes sense to them because that’s how they like to trade.
Source: Matt Hougan
Ethereum is still stablecoin king
Stablecoin supplies on Solana have grown to $13.9 billion, giving it a stablecoin tokenization market share of 4.7%, according to RWA.xyz.
It is still a minnow compared to industry leader Ethereum (ETH), which has $172.5 billion in onchain stablecoin value and a commanding market share of 59%. This increases to 65% when Ethereum layer-2 networks such as Arbitrum, Base, and Polygon are included.
Offchain Labs’ Chief Strategic Officer, AJ Warner, compared Solana and Ethereum total value locked on Saturday, stating, “TVL is definitely not everything, but I don’t think you can doubt where the best place to launch new stablecoins is. Build within the EVM.”
Bitwise big on Solana
It is not the first time Bitwise executives have hyped up Solana (SOL). Speaking with Cointelegraph at Token2049 in Singapore last week, Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley said that Solana may gain an edge over Ethereum in the staking exchange-traded fund (ETF) market, citing its design as more favorable for investors.
He said that Solana’s unstaking period is much faster than Ethereum’s, which is important because “ETFs need to be able to return assets on a very short time frame. So this is a huge challenge.”
Related: Can Solana rival Wall Street? Kyle Samani thinks so
Bitwise Solana ETF decision due soon
The company offers a fund called the Bitwise Physical Solana ETP that provides investors with exposure to SOL through a fully backed, physically held structure with institutional-grade custody. Interest has been muted in comparison to BTC or Ether-based ETFs, with just $30 million in assets under management, according to Bitwise.
The firm also has a spot Solana ETF waiting in the SEC approval queue with the final decision due on Oct. 16.
SOL prices were trading down 2% on the day at $227 at the time of writing. The asset remains down more than 22% from its January 2025 all-time high.
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