Solana CME Futures Underperform Compared to BTC and ETH, But There's a Catch

According to K33 Research, taking into account the market capitalization of assets, the relative volume of SOL futures looks more attractive.

Christian Sandor, Danny Nelson | Edited by Steven Alpher Updated March 19, 2025, 19:16 UTC Published March 18, 2025, 19:59 UTC

Key points:

• Solana's SOL futures launched on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) on Monday with notional daily volume of $12.3 million and open interest of $7.8 million, significantly lower than Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) futures.
• According to K33 Research, despite the seemingly less than successful start, SOL's first-day performance, taking into account market capitalization, is more in line with BTC and ETH.
• FalconX's Joshua Lim noted that despite the negative market conditions, the launch of CME SOL futures provides institutions with new opportunities to manage risks associated with the token.

In case you missed it, here's the key point: Solana's SOL futures began trading on Monday on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), which is the trading venue for American institutions, and unlike previous historic launches of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) on the CME, it didn't generate much excitement.

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The product saw $12.3 million in notional volume on its first day and closed with $7.8 million in open interest, significantly behind similar debuts for BTC and ETH, according to K33 Research. For reference, BTC futures launched in December 2017 with $102.7 million in first-day volume and $20.9 million in open interest, while ETH futures debuted in February 2021 with $31 million in volume and $20 million in open interest, according to K33.

SOL, which has also been pressured by speculative memecoin activity, crypto bearish momentum, and even bad publicity, is down about 10% from its weekend high, while Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are down 4.5% and 3.8%, respectively.

While SOL's launch may seem small in absolute numbers, it looks more balanced compared to the early days of BTC and ETH when you consider its market cap, K33 analysts Vetle Lunde and David Zimmerman noted. Solana's market cap was about $65 billion on Monday, down from ETH's $200 billion and BTC's $318 billion at the time of the CME launch.