Osprey Funds has readied a private SOL fund for wealthy investors, a signal of the growing institutional interest in the Solana network’s booming native token.
Registered with U.S. securities regulators Tuesday, the “Osprey Solana Trust” did not have any sales as of Tuesday. It is only open to accredited investors – meaning retail traders are shut out for now.
That could change. Osprey is “seeking approval” for its Solana Trust to trade on the same over-the-counter marketplace that its bitcoin trust sits on, documents reviewed by CoinDesk show.
The trust appears to be the first private SOL investment vehicle in the U.S. It comes as a growing number of investors take interest in Solana, whose SOL token is up over 4,500% this year. It’s nearly doubled in value in the last week and now touts a market cap of over $20 billion.
Osprey has been working on its own Solana trust since at least mid-June, according to SEC records. Stiff competitor Grayscale (which is owned by CoinDesk parent company Digital Currency Group) signaled its own Solana fund was in the works one day prior.
Trust products such as Osprey’s give Wall Street types a way to gain exposure to crypto prices without directly holding the underlying tokens. Instead, they give their cash to an investment vehicle that does the buying and holding on their behalf – usually for a fee.
Osprey would not begin charging a 2.5% management fee until 2023 in a sign of the competition for institutional crypto products, according to the documents reviewed by CoinDesk. Coinbase is handling custodial duties and Theorem is the administrator.
Osprey did not immediately return a comment to CoinDesk.
