October 31, 2025
It was the last day of Uptober and Solana’s founders made a trip to the New York Stock Exchange.
Welcome to the Meridian Update. It’s the last day of October. Let’s dive in.
Solana’s founders made a trip to NYSE
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) tweeted about it:
“The epicenter of capital markets. Welcome, @solana community.
@BitwiseInvest celebrates the launch of the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF $BSOL”
Solana’s Twitter account replied:
“Thanks for hosting 🙏
Now let’s put capital markets on the internet, where they belong 🤝”
You could read this exchange as totally innocuous, mutual celebration. You could also read into NYSE’s tweet saying epicenter of capital markets in reference to NYSE and Solana’s tweet replying with let’s put capital markets on the internet, where they belong. Does NYSE want NYSE to remain the epicenter, meaning the distributed internet would not be the epicenter? Does Solana want the distributed internet to supplant NYSE’s status as the epicenter?
Something to keep an eye on.
Uptober is coming to a close, and markets are down
We explained the concept of Uptober earlier this month:
“The idea is that there’s been an anomaly, historically, where Bitcoin’s price grows in October. There’s some sense where this doesn’t just apply to Bitcoin. Vibes matter, they say. So some people get excited for October. They think Bitcoin prices, and maybe also prices of other on-chain assets, will go up during the month.”
Barring a really big Friday, Bitcoin (BTC) will end the month down and so will the Solana Index, which is built and maintained by our friends at Meridian Research. So much for Uptober.
In any case, we decided to end the month with something we’ve never done before: something of a month in review. It’s quite simple. We tally how many days we wrote about news related a big theme. We will then list out the top three by days. Here we go.
Coming in first with 8 days of mentions: US law and regulation matters and it’s on the move.
A confirmation about a CFTC chair nomination, rumors of a CFTC chair nomination, a presidential pardon kind of counts, a lawsuit kind of counts, regulatory chatter catching attention, action on Capitol Hill, even earlier (and ultimately accurate!) rumors of a CFTC chair nomination, and the first mention of Hester Peirce of the month.
Coming in second with 7 days of mentions: People want exposure to on-chain assets in off-chain ways.
Solana ETFs, Solana ETFs, Solana on Fidelity, Solana ETFs, Solana DATs, Solana ETFs, Solana ETFs. That marks 7 days where on-chain world news emphasized this theme.
Coming in third with 5 days of mentions: People are taking things from the off-chain world and tokenizing them, or making them ownable on-chain.
A major funding round, gold’s no good very bad day, an SEC Commissioner calls asset tokenization a “key focus area,” the CEO of BlackRock says we are at the beginning of the tokenization of all assets, and the same SEC Commissioner talked about asset tokenization earlier in the month.
They call them themes for a reason.
That’s a wrap
It was the last day of Uptober and Solana’s founders made a trip to the New York Stock Exchange. Have a great weekend.
Think we missed something today? Send us a note: email@meridianupdate.com.