Pantera founder says Solana is firm’s biggest crypto bet with $1.1 billion position

Speaking to Andrew Sorkin on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” program on Monday, Pantera Capital founder and Managing Partner Dan Morehead revealed that Solana is the venture capital firm’s largest crypto position.

Responding to a question comparing the outperformance of different blockchains and asking if it’s a winner-take-all market, “No, it isn’t,” Morehead said. “It’s not like there’s not a winner-take-all on the internet, right? We have lots of different internet companies. There will be lots of blockchains that are important, but our biggest position is Solana. We have $1.1 billion of Solana on our books.” That represents around 23% of the firm’s total $4.7 billion in assets under management, according to its website.

While there are lots of internet companies, there are not a lot of protocols, Sorkin highlighted, pushing the Pantera founder on how many crypto protocols he thought would survive long term. “I think there’s a single-digit number of Layer 1s, things like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, not thousands, but definitely not one,” Morehead said.

In May 2024, Pantera made what it described at the time as its “largest-ever investment” in TON, the native cryptocurrency of the TON blockchain, closely linked to the messaging app giant Telegram. However, the amount was not disclosed, and since the mini-game hype cycle surrounding Telegram and TON blockchain came to an end around the same time, TON is down around 60%, according to The Block’s price page.

Pressed on whether any better crypto technologies were emerging, “Well, right now it’s Solana,” Morehead said. “We’ve had huge positions in Ethereum in the past; we used to be 100% Bitcoin, something could come out tomorrow. [But] Solana can do 9 billion transactions a day, which is more than all capital markets combined. So it’s not obvious you need that next thing past Solana.”

Regarding long-term price action, Morehead said that Bitcoin remains a single-digit percentage of global wealth, anticipating it could reach $750,000 in the next four or five years. However, with Solana just 5% of Bitcoin’s market cap, he believes it will outperform over time.

Earlier on Monday, Pantera announced that it was leading a private investment in public equity offering alongside Summer Capital for Helius Medical Technologies to raise over $500 million to launch a Solana treasury company. The Nasdaq-listed micro-cap firm jumped 142% by Monday’s close following the news.

“For 12 years, we’ve been trying to provide access, but it’s normally to very institutional investors,” Morehead told Sorkin. “This is the first product we’ve ever offered that you can just go buy at your brokerage account. So it allows access to cryptocurrencies to kind of normal investors. And so far, Solana doesn’t even have an ETF, so it’s very, very difficult for a normal investor to get access to Solana.”

Bitcoin and Ethereum ‘monster move’

Later in the day, Tom Lee, Managing Partner at Fundstrat and Chair of Ethereum treasury firm BitMine, told CNBC’s Dominic Chu on “Closing Bell” that if the Federal Reserve cuts rates as expected, Bitcoin and Ethereum are likely to be the biggest crypto beneficiaries, alongside the Nasdaq 100 and small caps.

Describing the current bull market as mid-cycle, Lee said the next leg of the rally is contingent on the Fed cutting, helping the ISM manufacturing index to get back above 50 for the first time in 31 months, and bringing down mortgage rates, especially in an environment where the labor market has slowed.

“I’m looking at September 98 and September 2024 as the playbook, because those are both years where the Fed was on an extended pause, and they cut in September,” Lee said. “The number one trade is NASDAQ 100. So I think that’s why the MAG-7 and the AI trade get a lot of liftoff.”

“The second is monetary liquidity sensitivity, global central banks’ easing. That’s Bitcoin and Ethereum. And seasonally strong, I think they could make a monster move in the next three months, like, huge,” he added. “And the third, of course, is interest rate sensitives. That’s really small caps and financials, but really the first two might be the standout trades.”

Bitcoin mainly reacts to monetary policy and liquidity, while Ethereum is both liquidity-sensitive and tied to broader innovation — from AI and Wall Street adoption to stablecoins, Lee said. He likened Ethereum to the post-1971 dollar era, calling it a “growth protocol,” which is why BitMine is heavily accumulating it.