Solana ETFs & Meme Coins Surge as Investors Double Down on Crypto’s Riskiest Bets

Crypto's wild west just got wilder. Institutional money is flooding into Solana ETFs while retail traders YOLO into meme coins—proving greed still outpaces fear in 2025's bull run.

Wall Street meets degens

Asset managers are quietly stacking Solana exposure through newly approved ETFs, betting the 'Ethereum killer' can sustain its 300% year-to-date rally. Meanwhile, crypto Twitter keeps pumping speculative trash like 'Dogewifhat 2.0' to absurd valuations.

When the SEC greenlit crypto derivatives but still won't define securities clearly, you get this schizophrenic market—where pension funds and gamblers somehow chase the same volatility. Stay solvent long enough to see who blinks first.

Nansen data further showed that the number of active addresses on solana jumped 5.3 percent to 24.4 million, and fees generated climbed 44 percent, reaching $7.68 million. Over the past 30 days, the network handled more than 2.1 billion transactions.

Investors show a growing appetite for Solana ETFs and meme coins

US-listed Solana ETFs have quietly brought $78 million in the last month, underlining growing demand for altcoin-based funds even as Bitcoin remains the market leader.

The REX-Osprey SOL + Staking ETF (SSK), which began trading on July 2, has amassed more than $41 million in assets already, based on Bloomberg Intelligence data. 

Volatility Shares’ Leveraged Solana ETF (SOLT) has gathered $69 million so far this year, while its standard Solana ETF (SOLZ) has held $23 million.

These inflows arrive as several fund managers prepare for what they hope will be the next big ETF approval in the US. Although the SEC has not yet green-lit such an offering, many in the industry are growing hopeful it could win approval soon.

According to CoinGecko data, meme tokens on Solana have also seen a pump alongside the broader rally. PENGU by Pudgy Penguins and Bonk are the two high-market-cap meme coins that recorded the highest climb this week. 

PENGU is 48.2% and Bonk has spiked 33.9% over the last 7 days, according to present data by CoinGecko. Their current market caps stand at $1,918,146,113 and $1,465,716,245, respectively.  

Goatseus Maximus rose 27.0%, while Peanut the Squirrel and POPCAT gained 21.7% and 21.2% respectively. 

Dogwifhat added 13.6% while the OFFICIAL TRUMP coin climbed to 11.8%. Smaller advances came from Fartcoin (4.5%), dog (Bitcoin) (7.1%), and aura (6.8%). Among the major meme tokens, only Useless Coin and Melania Meme slipped, down 3.7% and 0.1%. 

In the last 24 hours, Bonk saw about $1.46 billion in trading volume, Pudgy Penguins $863 million, and Official TRUMP $520 million, highlighting strong trading interest alongside Solana’s gains.

Reflecting the growing interest in Sol-based meme coins, Pump.fun, a Solana-based meme coin launchpad that allows users to create speculative meme coins, raised $600 million in just 12 minutes during its ICO, making it the largest ICO on record.

In an X post on July 9th, Pump. Fun said it WOULD sell 150 billion coins at a price of $0.004 per token. Prior to the public sale, the platform had sold 180 billion coins to private investors at that same price.

the $PUMP public sale has now ended.

we are delighted to reveal that the $PUMP public sale was able to sell out in only 12 minutes.

we would like to thank our entire community for participating!

the $PUMP tokens will now enter the distribution phase 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/uqhQwRkL4f

Alon Cohen, co-founder of Pump.fun, confirmed that this offering generated $600 million, raising the total funds to about $1.32 billion. Pump.fun also noted that UK and US investors were not eligible to participate in the token sale.

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