SOL inches toward $100 mark this week due to meme coin hype
Solana’s native token, SOL, traded for nearly $100 early Friday. Analysts partially attributed its surge to a spike in meme coin issuances within the last few weeks.
Data show that Solana’s trading volumes and network fees exceeded Ethereum’s — which typically records the highest of said criteria — on a seven-day rolling basis. Despite that, Solana’s market capitalization remained small compared to Ethereum’s $267 billion.
The total value locked on the blockchain’s decentralized applications grew to $1.3 billion worth of tokens, from $400 million in November.
SOL has recorded a year-to-date gain of more than 830 percent, with the fastest growth in the last two months.
Analysts note that the buying pressure remains amid significant selling pressure from FTX’s bankruptcy estate. According to reports, the crypto exchange holds billions of dollars worth of SOL.
“Solana is recovering more steadily than most major competitors and shows more interest in it in the community, which promises to keep its performance above the market in the coming months,” said Alex Kuptsikevich, a senior market analyst at FxPro, as quoted by Coindesk.
Kuptsikevich explained that Google searches on Solana had increased by 250 percent in the past two months. He pointed out that renewed interest in the altcoin coincided with the “explosive growth” of the token and meme coins uprising.
An onslaught of new meme coins has been launched, starting from the release of Dog-themed bonk (BONK). In late November, BONK saw an increase of over 1,000% in value. In the past few weeks, there were BONK (as well as ACS and JTO) airdrops for Solana users. However, recent data showed that BONK had lost 30 percent of its value within a week.
dogwifhat (WIF), released on December 14, yielded its early buyers a more than 10,000% gain in a short time. On December 22, WIF added 35 percent in market capitalization due to its popularity in social media X.
Several analysts expect SOL to maintain its growth momentum in the next few weeks. Previously, on December 21, crypto analyst Cryptonary described the $81 mark as a major resistance for SOL at that time.
He said a “clean break above” would create a bullish momentum for the token. However, the analysts cautioned that SOL had displayed signs of being overbought, which might lead to a downward movement.
Angel Marinov is the Managing Editor at Coinlabz. With extensive knowledge of crypto payments and blockchain use cases, Angel is a trusted source of accurate and timely information
