Does Solana Need Its Own Michael Saylor and Strategy?

For the last five years, Michael Saylor has been synonymous with one of the boldest Bitcoin bets in financial history — transforming MicroStrategy into a proxy Bitcoin ETF before one even existed. Now, a new playbook is being written and this time, it’s not Bitcoin that’s the focus — it’s Solana.

“There are so many institutional investors who prefer equities,” said Matt Sigel, Head of Digital Asset Research at VanEck. “A big part of it is the governance and disclosure is standardized… those securities can fit right alongside a typical equity portfolio.”

VanEck has been leading the charge on the institutional front, filing for the first Solana ETF in June last year and continuing to await updates as the U.S. gears up for what could be a post-Gensler regulatory reset. But before that milestone, there’s a race underway in the public markets — one that mirrors the early days of Bitcoin’s treasury strategy boom. At the center of it is DeFi Dev Corp, a company modeled loosely after MicroStrategy, but with its own twist.

“We kind of think of it as the MicroStrategy 2.0,” said Parker White, COO of DeFi Dev Corp. “Because Solana is a native yield asset and it's this kind of fuel inside of this whole DeFi ecosystem, there's a bunch of things that you can do with Solana… to generate extra yield as opposed to Bitcoin, which… kind of sits in a vault.”

White says the goal is simple: “We believe we can stack SOL faster than any other entity on the planet.”

But expectations are high. According to Sigel, “MicroStrategy famously trades at about 100% premium to the value of its Bitcoin. There’s three Solana treasury companies more or less. They’re trading at 4- to 6-times the value of their Solana.” That has since come down a bit as Solana's price has retreated the past few weeks.

But nonetheless, that kind of market premium reflects a growing appetite for exposure — not just to Solana as a token, but to the broader thesis that it might become the winning Layer-1 blockchain in a crowded field.

“We think the most likely scenario is that most of the economic activity on open source blockchains will consolidate into one or a small handful of Layer-1s,” Sigel said. “We think [Solana] has the best shot of becoming that leading blockchain.”

Part of that optimism comes from real technical performance. But another part is just plain memetics. Sigel predicted late last year that Solana could surpass $500 per coin in 2025.

“How strong is the culture [and] meme-ability?” Sigel asked rhetorically. “It's really validating to the thesis to have now three public companies that have committed to that treasury strategy.”

That said, it is still early — both in Solana's life cycle and in DeFi Dev Corp's. The company's job now, as White sees it, is to get traditional investors off zero.

“People ask, ‘Hey, what are you guys doing?’ [We say] ‘Hey, we're the best way to accumulate Solana.’ And they're like, ‘Cool, what's Solana?’”

While Bitcoin had to battle skepticism in its early days, Solana now benefits from having a clearer financial playbook to follow — but it also comes with unique challenges. For one, ETFs tied to staked assets raise fresh tax and regulatory questions.

“There’s still some operational details around how to manage a staked Solana ETF that we don’t have answers to,” Sigel noted. “Unfortunately, that information needs to come from the IRS… staking and undertaking the Solana that would theoretically be inside of one of these ETFs… that’s a form of active management that we think can blow up the tax status.”

But even with that uncertainty, Sigel sees the writing on the wall. “Once that happens, all of the U.S.-based broker-dealers will be touching these assets directly… and I think the biggest impact will be in the derivatives market.”

In Sigel view, Solana doesn’t necessarily need a Saylor — but it needs someone who understands risk, timing, and volatility. “Most crypto bull markets kind of end in a blow-off leverage top. There’s no balance sheets right now that are really providing that,” he said, noting that traditional finance could step in to fill the vacuum left by collapsed crypto lenders like BlockFi and Celsius.

Still, White isn’t putting a stake in the ground like Saylor did with his pledge to “never sell” his Bitcoin. “I wouldn't put a guidepost on the other side and guarantee that we'll sell" White said. “But if [our stock] gets deep enough [into a discount], I think we’d have to take a pretty serious look at returning value to shareholders. It could be in the form of buybacks, it could also be… a SOL-denominated dividend.”

The one thing he’s certain of? Survival matters more than hype.

“The winners in this model will not be determined in the bull market,” White said. “They will be determined in the bear market… you want to look at a team that's going to be around for the long haul.” Coinage is a community-owned DAO letting our NFT holders become actual co-owners in one of the fastest-growing Web3 media outlets. Mint an NFT and become a member today to open a path to patronage dividends, or stake with us to support our project. You can catch up on all our Crypto Project of the Year coverage here, or on our YouTube channel. Subscribe to our free Substack to catch all the important headlines from around the crypto world.