New York investment management firm VanEck has submitted a proposal to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch a Solana (SOL) spot ETF. However, some industry insiders doubt whether the current authorities will approve it.

The latest proposal represents the industry’s first attempt to launch a Solana spot ETF in the United States. Many analysts say that with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) releasing an Ethereum spot ETF in the near future, the launch of the Solana spot ETF is inevitable, but at the same time, there are also voices in the market expressing doubts.

Haseeb Qureshi, partner at investment firm Dragonfly Capital, said:

Impossible to achieve. I suspect just to build goodwill and lay the groundwork to take the lead. But the SEC has stated that they consider SOL to be a security. The authorities will not deviate from this.

Bloomberg ETF expert James Seyffart has a similar view. He believes that unless there is a new administration in the White House and the SEC chairman is replaced, it is possible to see the Solana spot ETF debut in 2025.

The biggest immediate legal hurdle for the Solana spot ETF is SEC enforcement indicating that SOL is an unregistered security. For example, a year ago, the SEC sued Binance for allowing SOL and 11 other cryptocurrencies to trade based on securities laws passed in the early 1930s and the Howey Test.

Many cryptocurrency legal experts challenge the above assertion on the grounds that "tokens based on decentralized, globally dispersed ledgers should not be compared to corporate equity." This is unreasonable. For example, industry lobbyists at Coin Center have published numerous reports arguing that the decentralized technical level and permissionless nature of blockchain, as well as the way tokens are distributed, should be taken into consideration.

In addition, there are market supervision issues. Haseeb Qureshi, a partner at investment firm Capital, pointed out that the reason why Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs can comply with the SEC’s market supervision requirements is that these cryptocurrencies already have well-developed futures markets before trading. In comparison, SOL currently does not have a futures market and it is more difficult to obtain market regulatory standards.

"My guess is that the SEC will deny VanEck's application based on the lack of a futures market," said Jake Chervinsky, Variant Fund's legal director.

Austin Campbell, an associate professor at Columbia Business School, also said that VanEck’s application is unlikely to be approved and that this strategy is just “preparation in advance.”

It is worth noting that VanEck said on Wednesday that it would waive the handling fee for its Ethereum spot ETF, thereby becoming "the preferred provider of cryptocurrency ETFs."

While legal challenges may stymie VanEck’s application, many legal commentators are optimistic that a string of cryptocurrency ETFs will eventually be approved.

With many predicting that former President Trump’s recent embrace of cryptocurrencies will boost his approval ratings, the overall sentiment toward cryptocurrencies will also change.

Brian Frye, a law professor at the University of Kentucky, said: "Obviously the SEC is about to approve the Ethereum spot ETF, so I think the final approval of the Solana spot ETF is inevitable. From a regulatory perspective, Ethereum and Solana are basically the same."

But he believes it will be some time before the Solana spot ETF is approved because of the SEC’s slowness and current leadership that doesn’t trust cryptocurrencies very much.

〈Solana spot ETF is "difficult to pass" in the short term, experts point out "these reasons"〉 This article was first published on "Block Guest".