Meet Sol Strategies: The MicroStrategy of Solana

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Toronto-based Cypherpunk Holdings rebranded as Sol Strategies and announced it would be accumulating Solana three months ago. It’s gotten busy since then.

The holding company has acquired two separate validator operations, accumulated over 142,000 SOL worth roughly $27 million at current prices, hired Kraken’s former senior director of engineering to be its head of staking, and applied to be listed on the Nasdaq. Just this week, it signed a credit facility with its board chair to buy $17.3 million worth of SOL tokens and announced a private placement deal with ParaFi Capital worth roughly $19 million.

MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor is fond of saying that “there is no second best” crypto behind bitcoin. If there is a second-best version of MicroStrategy’s corporate crypto purchasing playbook, it just might be the one Sol Strategies is running.

Like Saylor’s firm, Sol Strategies is focused on acquiring crypto as a treasury asset. The difference, CEO Leah Wald told me, is that Sol Strategies also runs a validator business and invests in Solana ecosystem projects, making its approach “more dynamic.”

Following Sol Strategies’ two validator acquisitions, it now is responsible for a combined 1.5 million staked SOL, which makes it roughly the 65th largest Solana validator. Wald declined to say which ecosystem projects Sol Strategies has taken positions in, if any.

Wald came to Cypherpunk Holdings in July 2024 after a four-year run at the helm of US-based crypto management firm Valkyrie, which had its ETF business acquired by CoinShares in March. Wald had been a board member at Cypherpunk since October 2021.

Charged with taking over a company that had seen its stock trade sideways for years, Wald — who was among the first to file for and issue bitcoin futures ETFs — saw a new opportunity. Solana was hot, but it lacked ETFs that investors could trade on traditional stock exchanges. So far, the SOL strategy appears to be working out.

Since debuting as Sol Strategies in September, the company’s stock price is up more than 1,700% — and that’s while a Nasdaq listing is still pending approval.

There’s probably a storm approaching Sol Strategies’ parade in the form of Solana ETFs. Currently, Sol Strategies is one of just a few publicly-traded companies giving investors regulated exposure to Solana’s price action by virtue of holding the asset in its treasury.

If Solana ETFs get approved, the market would gain competitors offering a similar service (although whether or not those ETF issuers include staking rewards will be key to watch). Sol Strategies will hope the market treats it like a bitcoin mining stock in that case.

But for now, Wald and Sol Strategies’ big bet is paying big dividends.

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