Solana Futures Start Quietly on CME, Falls Short of Bitcoin and Ethereum’s Early Hype: K33

Solana (SOL) futures trading in its debut on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Monday generated $12.3 million in notional daily volume, finishing the day with $7.8 million in open interest, far less than the totals of Bitcoin and Ethereum futures in their launches, according to K33 Research.

But in an X post Tuesday, K33 Head of Research Vetle Lunde wrote that the SOL futures start was similar to BTC and Ethereum relative to their market capitalizations at the time.

“If you normalize volumes to market caps at the launch days, the launch aligns closer to the two,” Lunde wrote.

Bitcoin futures, which began trading on the CME on Dec. 17, 2017, near the height of a bull market, booked nearly $103 million in total value from trades and positions and closed with $20.9 million in open interest.

Ethereum futures, which debuted in early 2022 as crypto markets were surging, generated $31 million in notional daily value and $20 million in open interest, according to K33.

Solana futures’ launch comes as the underlying asset swoons amid a broader market downturn and the collapse of meme coin projects that favored the blockchain, leading to a massive price run-up in late 2024 and early this year.

SOL was recently trading at about $125, down 2.5% but more than 8% off its weekend high, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko.

It is changing hands at less than half its all-time high set near the end of January.

In an X post last week, Lunde wrote that he was “excited for CME’s SOL launch,” noting current market conditions did not resemble those during the Bitcoin and Ethereum futures launches.

“CME BTC futures launched at the pico peak in 2017,” he wrote. “CME ETH futures launched in the early innings of one of the stupidest years ever experienced by the modern man on the same day as the Elon candle.”

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair