Solana September 2025 Update

Institutional Flows: DATCOs and ETFs

In late August, we released a Flashnote arguing that SOL was poised for outperformance into year-end on the back of strong structural TradFi flows, driven by 1) SOL-focused DATCOs, 2) a likely October ETF approval, and 3) a strong fundamental growth story.

In September, this thesis began to play out, specifically regarding DATCO flows. On September 11, Forward Industries (Nasdaq: FORD), led by Galaxy, Multicoin, and Jump, announced the successful close of a $1.65B private placement in cash and stablecoin commitments, appointing Kyle Samani as chairman. FORD acquired 6.82M SOL (worth $1.56B at $230 per SOL) in less than a week, becoming the largest SOL-focused DATCO and seventh overall by NAV as of October 3, 2025.

Meanwhile, Solana Company (Nasdaq: HSDT), led by Pantera and Summer Capital, closed a $500M private placement, with an additional $750M available to be raised upon exercise of stapled warrants to purchase common stock of the company. HSDT has taken a somewhat more conservative accumulation strategy, acquiring 760k SOL (~$175M) as of writing. The chart below shows that SOL-focused DATCOs acquired 9.84M SOL ($2.16B at $220 per SOL) in September.

SOL-focused DATCOs now hold 2.3% of SOL’s supply, still below the ~3.5% held by both Bitcoin and Ethereum DATCOs.