Marco Santori, a general partner at Pantera Capital, on Wednesday, emphasized the benefits of DeFi Development Corp’s Solana-focused strategy over traditional exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The key advantage lies in active involvement in decentralized finance, as opposed to passive exposure.
Pantera Capital is one of the investors in DeFi Development Corp, and Santori is also a member of the company’s board. He made these comments during an X Space session hosted by The Block on May 21.
According to Santori, the company’s shift from a real estate software firm to accumulating Solana earlier this year was strategically planned. He said, “We figured this would be a more efficient way to stack Solana than an ETF for numerous reasons, one of them being our active participation in DeFi.”
Santori further explained that DeFi Development Corp holds 400,091 SOL as of the time of writing. The firm initially purchased $9.6 million worth of the token in April and also shared plans to acquire an unidentified Solana validator business worth $3.5 million on May 5. This acquisition would support self-staking of the company’s SOL holdings.
“Staking is the initial strategy, something ETFs are not capable of currently,” added Santori. As an operational company, DeFi Dev Corp can also provide liquidity in DeFi, thus participating in liquidity pools. These are options not available to a simple, passive fund.
As of May 21, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has not approved any Solana ETFs. It has yet to decide whether crypto ETFs can stake assets. A ruling on Ethereum ETF staking rules was postponed on April 14, as more time was needed to assess the long-term regulatory implications.
Marco Santori joined Pantera Capital in April after serving as the chief legal officer at crypto exchange Kraken. He also joined the board of DeFi Development Corp in the same month. As of publication, Solana was trading at about $171 per token.
