A Nasdaq-listed company that had built its balance sheet on Solana has held no SOL at all since
October 16. SkyAI, known as Sharps Technology until the rename, has sold a little over 2 million SOL,
sits on roughly $223.8 million in cash and is offering its own shareholders up to $201.3 million of
that in a buyback. What counts for the price is less the quantity sold than the price at which this
seller got out: $107.51 on average, net of fees. SOL trades at $106.32 on Tuesday evening, 1.1 percent
below that mark.
This is no footnote from the world of US balance sheets. Six listed companies hold just over 17
million SOL between them, and whatever happens to those holdings feeds into the same order book that
European investors buy in. Where the price may point over a horizon of months is covered in our
Solana price prediction.
This article answers the question that comes before it: what happens when a holder of that size closes
the door from the inside.
SkyAI sells 2 million SOL: the sequence from October 11 to 16
In September the company still reported more than 2 million SOL. On October 11 it disclosed having
sold around 1 million of them. An update dated October 14 still showed 210,000 SOL on the balance
sheet, alongside $204.6 million in cash. By October 16 the holding was at zero. The filings submitted
to the US Securities and Exchange Commission for the buyback offer date the completion of the sales to
October 15. The sequence was reported by the trade outlet
coinpaper
on October 19, drawing on the company’s own disclosures.
The company puts the average price at $107.51 per SOL, net of fees. That figure, however, covers
only the transactions completed before the October 14 update. For the remainder of the holding, the
final 210,000 SOL, no separate price has been given. Reading the $107.51 as an average across the
entire liquidation puts a number in the company’s mouth that it never named.
Measured against supply, 2 million SOL amount to 0.34 percent of all 589.5 million coins. Measured
against trading it is more than it sounds: with daily turnover of $2.67 billion, $213 million equals
roughly 8 percent of a full trading day. Spread across five days that stays digestible; in a single
session it would not have been.
$107.51: the price at which a seller with no choice got out
Levels usually come out of the chart. This one comes out of a balance sheet, which makes it firmer
than a drawn line. A seller who had to unwind a position in full, because a buyback offer to its own
shareholders depended on it, received $107.51 on average. Above that level, in other words, the market
was able to absorb selling pressure of this magnitude without breaking down.
Tuesday’s low was $103.66 and the high $107.93. The price is swinging right around the exit level.
If SOL closes above $107.51 for several days, the selling pressure from this one firm has been worked
off without the market keeping it. If the price falls below and stays there, the buyers from that
period are under water, and that zone is where follow-on selling tends to sit.
The $100 level, which we described as decisive on October 14 and again on October 17, has held in
the meantime. In our article of October 14, SOL stood at $103.82, and at $103 on October 15. Today it
is $106.32, up 1.75 percent over 24 hours and down 1.59 percent on the week. The holding drained away,
then, without breaking the support. That is the real finding of this week, and it reads more positively
than the headline suggests.
Yesterday we examined the
capital turnover of the
Solana blockchain in this slot: 2.2 times the trading volume of Ethereum on an eighth of the
capital tied up. What has been added since is the cross-check on the supply side. A market that absorbs
a good 2 million SOL from a forced unwind in five days and ends 2.5 percent above its daily low confirms
exactly the turnover we measured yesterday in the volume figures. The difference: yesterday it was a
metric, today it is a completed sale.
Treasury companies: the discount to net asset value explains the exit
A crypto treasury company is a listed company whose business purpose is essentially to hold a
cryptocurrency and fund that holding through the equity market. Investors do not buy the coin, they buy
a share with coins behind it. The metric for this is mNAV: the ratio of the company’s market
capitalisation to the net asset value of its holdings. An mNAV of 1.0 means the market is paying exactly
market value for the holding.
The model only works above 1.0. If the share trades above net asset value, the company can issue new
shares, buy more coins with the proceeds and raise the holding per share. Once mNAV slips below 1.0 the
mechanics invert: every new share dilutes existing holders, and the most sensible use of capital is to
buy back its own stock. That is precisely where the sector stands right now.
17 million SOL sit in six balance sheets, all below net asset value
The Solana treasury tracker run by The Block lists six listed holders with 17,045,723 SOL between
them. That is 2.89 percent of the circulating supply and, at today’s price, around $1.81 billion. The
tracker names no cut-off date, and it still shows Sharps Technology with 1,997,796 SOL, the very
position the company has since sold in full. The remaining rows are therefore to be read as a snapshot
rather than a current holding.
- Forward Industries (FWDI): 7,550,000 SOL, mNAV 0.73, so 27 percent below net asset value
- DeFi Development Corp. (DFDV): 2,490,304 SOL, mNAV 0.38
- Solana Company (HSDT): 2,300,000 SOL, mNAV 0.72
- Upexi (UPXI): 2,174,583 SOL, mNAV 0.25, the widest discount in the field
- Sharps Technology (STSS), today SkyAI: 1,997,796 SOL in the tracker, zero in reality
- Sol Strategies (STKE): 533,040 SOL, mNAV 0.83
None of the six trades at or above the net asset value of its holdings. The range runs from a 17
percent discount at Sol Strategies to 75 percent at Upexi. For an investor that means: buying one of
these shares gets you a SOL for considerably less than on an exchange, but carries the risk that the
discount never closes. SkyAI has demonstrated how it can be closed, namely by liquidation.
The buyback offer: $3.00 per share until October 29
On October 19 SkyAI tabled a cash offer of up to $201.3 million. It is bidding $3.00 per share or
per warrant and will accept up to 95 percent of each eligible class. The deadline falls on October 29,
unless the company extends it or terminates the offer sooner. Funding comes entirely from cash on hand,
with no new debt. If the offer is taken up in full, around $22.5 million remains before transaction
costs.
One condition has fallen away, and it says more about the situation than the figures do: originally
the offer was to apply only as long as SOL traded above $100 during the acceptance period. The company
struck that clause because it no longer holds any SOL, which leaves the price irrelevant to the funding.
SkyAI has announced no return to a Solana holding; the company is repositioning towards an AI-driven
financial platform.
Bastion Trading demands $3.50 and changes to the board
Opposition is coming from the shareholder base. Bastion Trading, which has disclosed just under 9.99
percent of the common stock, is demanding a buyback price of at least $3.50, an independent review of
the SOL transactions and personnel changes on the board. The charge behind it is that the offer does not
protect shareholders adequately. We do not have a verbatim statement from Bastion; the demands are
reproduced in summarised form from press coverage.
Our assessment: for the SOL price this dispute is the better of two pieces of news.
As long as the buyback price is being negotiated, the argument is about distributing cash on hand rather
than about sales into the market. Selling pressure from this firm has been history since October 16,
evidenced by the holding of zero and by the deleted $100 clause. There is a second point against that:
five more companies still hold a good 15 million SOL, and all five trade below net asset value. What was
the end at SkyAI is a viable route for them. No buy recommendation follows from this, but a requirement
does: with any SOL position, know which wrapper it sits in.
Tax in Germany: a holding period on the coin, flat tax on the share
Here is the point at which the case touches European investors directly. The same economic bet on
Solana is taxed entirely differently depending on the wrapper.
If you hold SOL directly, section 23 of the German Income Tax Act applies: the sale is a private
disposal, and after a holding period of one year the gain is tax free. How stable that rule is remains
under debate; we track the state of play in our overview of the
crypto holding period. If
you hold the share of a treasury company instead, it is a security: 25 percent flat tax plus the
solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax, due from the first euro of gain above the
€1,000 saver’s allowance. There is no holding period there after which nothing more falls due.
The difference becomes concrete in a cash offer. Tendering shares into a buyback realises a sale for
tax purposes, even if it feels like a repayment. With a SOL that had sat in your own wallet for more than
a year, the same transaction would have carried no tax at all.
How to check what your Solana exposure actually consists of
Three points count now. First the wrapper: does your statement show a coin, an exchange-traded product
or a share? The holding period applies only to a coin under your own control. Second the backing: an
exchange-traded product on SOL should be physically backed, and the backing ratio appears in the issuer’s
key information document. Third the discount: with a treasury share, the current mNAV belongs on the table
before any purchase, because it decides whether you are buying SOL cheaply or a structure that keeps its
discount.
The same thought applies one level down, to custody. Holding SOL directly and intending to use the
one-year period requires an unbroken record of purchase date and purchase price. If the coins sit on an
exchange that pools balances, that record is harder to produce than with your own wallet and a clean
transaction history.
Fund flows and the date on October 21
Alongside the balance-sheet holders stands the second large source of demand, the funds. As we reported
on October 10, the run of 14 weeks of inflows into Solana funds ended with an outflow of $24.8 million, of
which around $21 million came from a single product; cumulatively, net inflows still stand at $1.58
billion, $816.8 million of that in the current year. Fund demand has not gone away, then, it has merely
lost its streak.
On the technical side Alpenglow is pending, the largest change to the consensus of the Solana blockchain.
The goal is transaction finality in the region of about 150 milliseconds instead of the current twelve
seconds and change; the project page at
solana.com tracks the
state of play. We reported the start on October 14 for Epoch 1064 on October 21. If you stake yourself, check
before the switch whether your own validator is coming along; if you stake through a provider, the
information sits in that provider’s status notice. The date is no trigger for the price, but it very much is
one for staking yield.
Nothing changes on the route to buying. Under the European MiCA regulation, providers selling or holding
crypto in Germany need authorisation; which firms have it and what they charge is shown in our
comparison of crypto exchanges.
Solana treasuries: the payout is decided by October 29
The first large Solana balance-sheet holder has closed its position, the market has shrugged it off, and
the price of its exit sits at $107.51. Three steps follow from that:
- Establish by October 29 which wrapper your Solana position sits in. If it is a treasury share, compare
its price with the net asset value per share before you add to it. If it is a coin, the direct route runs
through an authorised exchange, with terms in the comparison of crypto exchanges. - Document the purchase date and purchase price of every SOL tranche so the one-year period stays
provable. Which tools pull that automatically out of exchange exports is set out in the
comparison of crypto tax tools. - Move holdings you intend to hold beyond the one-year period into your own custody, and check the status
of your staking before October 21. Suitable devices are shown in the
comparison of hardware wallets.
(As of October 20, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change;
check the terms with the provider before you buy.)
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