Pantera’s Billion-Dollar Gamble: Why Solana and Bitcoin Are Set to Dominate Long-Term
Pantera Capital just placed one of the most aggressive bets in crypto history—a billion-dollar wager that Solana and Bitcoin will outperform traditional assets for decades to come.
Why Solana’s tech stack matters
Solana isn’t just another altcoin. Its high-throughput blockchain handles thousands of transactions per second—bypassing Ethereum’s congestion and gas fee nightmares. Developers are flocking to build scalable dApps, NFTs, and DeFi protocols there.
Bitcoin’s store-of-value thesis strengthens
Meanwhile, Bitcoin continues to eat traditional finance’s lunch. Institutional adoption isn’t slowing—it’s accelerating. BlackRock, Fidelity, and now Pantera see it as digital gold 2.0, especially as macro uncertainty rattles fiat currencies.
Of course, Wall Street will still find a way to overcomplicate it—maybe with a Bitcoin-backed ETF that charges a 2% management fee for the privilege of holding an asset that was designed to cut them out entirely.
Pantera picks Solana
In an interview, Morehead described Solana as “the fastest, cheapest, most performing” blockchain out there right now. He suggested that it has been the best performer of the bunch, outpacing bitcoin over the past four years
“Our biggest position is Solana,” he said. “We’ve had huge positions in ethereum in the past. We used to be 100% Bitcoin. Something could come out tomorrow.”
Solana has come a long way. The chain, which was on the brink after falling below the $10 mark in 2022, has come a long way to hit its all-time high of over $294 in 2025. SOL is trading at an average price of $235 at press time.
However, Morehead doesn’t see the industry splintering into thousands of winners and expects only a handful of blockchains to stick around long term. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and solana are at the top of that list. Ethereum, too, made a major comeback after dipping below the $1,500 levels in April 2025. ETH is trading at an average price of $4,509 at the press time.
His view on Bitcoin remains bold with the recent surge, expecting BTC to hit $750,000 within five years. In his words, the world’s largest cryptocurrency is still only scratching the surface, representing “a single-digit share of global wealth.”
Solana ETF hopes rise
The billion-dollar Solana bet echoes a playbook popularized by MicroStrategy’s (Strategy) Michael Saylor. Back in 2020, Saylor started buying Bitcoin for his company’s balance sheet and turned it into a proxy stock for the crypto. This move has already inspired others and attracted them to the industry.
The timing is interesting, too, as US regulators are inching closer to decisions on altcoin ETFs. Cryptopolitan reported that the DTCC quietly added products tied to Solana, XRP, and Hedera to its clearing roster last week. Meanwhile, this move is seen as a procedural step, not approval.
Still, Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas noted that most tickers that make it into the system eventually launch. The SEC, however, keeps kicking the can while delaying decisions on Canary’s XRP and Hedera filings and pushing Fidelity’s Solana ETF review into October.
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