Solana price eyes $300 as Grayscale launches SOL-backed trust

November 30, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Solana price eyes 0 as Grayscale launches SOL-backed trust

Altcoin

The Grayscale Solana Trust would allow high-net-worth and institutional investors to gain indirect exposures to the yearlong bullish SOL market.

Solana (SOL) held onto its intraday gains on Nov. 30 as Grayscale Investments, the largest cryptocurrency fund in the world, announced that it would add SOL to its product line.

The digital asset class is growing, and we’re expanding our offerings along with it! Gain exposure to $SOL, the native token of the @Solana network, through new Grayscale #Solana Trust. Learn more: https://t.co/QiT6u0xI7h pic.twitter.com/KAxRZAriRl
— Grayscale (@Grayscale) November 30, 2021

A $300 SOL ahead?

SOL rallied to nearly $217.50 after rising by over 6.50% intraday. The Solana token's gains came primarily as a part of a recovery move that started Nov. 28, wherein it rebounded over 20% upon testing a dependable multi-month ascending trendline as support (near $190), as shown in the chart below.

*SOL/USDT daily price chart featuring Ascending Trendline support. Source: TradingView*

The latest bout of buying near the trendline support also helped push SOL over the 23.6 Fib line (~$204) of its Fibonacci retracement graph, drawn from the $23.22-swing low to the $260.69-swing high. As a result, the $260-price level appears like the last line of defense between SOL and a new record high.

"SOL, although, looks like exhaustion, still $300-something is possible (this season)," noted @fomocapdao, an independent market analyst, adding:

"It depends on the whole [ecosystem though], meaning TVL, NFTs, Tabasco, announcements of announcements."

"Continued appetite" for Solana

Grayscale's decision to add Solana into its service portfolio promised to make SOL visible across more high-net-worth and institutional investors.

That is primarily because of Solana's incredible growth as a blockchain project in 2021. The layer-one protocol emerged as a rival to fellow smart contracts platform Ethereum after providing users with one of the lowest-costing and fastest public ledgers.

*Solana blockchain performance versus others. Source: Reddit*

Solana's ecosystem attracted over 500 projects spread across decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFT), Web 3.0, and other sectors, with 1.2 million active users on the network. Among them is Serum, a decentralized derivatives exchange backed by billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX and Alamada Research.

As a result, the price of SOL, which works as a fee and staking token inside the Solana ecosystem, surged by more than 10,700% year-over-year, with its circulating market capitalization peaking near $77.93 billion in November.

*SOL circulating market capitalization. Source: Messari*

Now valued at over $70 billion, Solana is still the fourth-largest blockchain by market capitalization, with Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein noting that there is already a "continued appetite" among investors to gain exposure in the blockchain project.

The statements came after Coinshares, a London-based asset management firm, reported net capital inflows worth over $250 million into the SOL-based exchange-traded products (ETP). This month alone, the Solana ETPs attracted around $42.2 million, Coinshares underscored in its Nov. 29 report.

Despite the calls for SOL to hit $300 next, the token still faces downside risks due to a few general issues, including excessive valuations on longer-timeframe charts and the possibility of network outages.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Solana surpasses Cardano, Tether to become fourth-biggest crypto worth $76 billion

November 7, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Solana surpasses Cardano, Tether to become fourth-biggest crypto worth billion

ADA price

SOL price reached another record high on Nov. 7, bringing its YTD gains up by roughly 17,500%.

Solana (SOL) surpassed Cardano (ADA) and leading stablecoin Tether (USDT) to become the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

At press time, the net worth of total SOL tokens in circulation was a little over $76 billion, falling only behind Binance Coin's (BNB) $109 billion, Ether's (ETH) $540 billion, and Bitcoin's (BTC) $1.17 trillion.

*Top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap as of 1330 UTC, Nov. 7. Source: Messari*

Meanwhile, Cardano and Tether's market cap came out to be $66.39 billion and $74.42 billion, respectively.

$100M fund launch boosts SOL's bullish outlook

Solana's market capitalization surged as its native token, SOL, rose to yet another record high. On Nov. 7, the SOL price crossed above $262 for the first time in history, primarily owing to a market-wide price rally that saw other top cryptocurrencies ink similar gains.

Meanwhile, SOL received additional bullish cues from Solana's foray into Web3 gaming development via its venture capital arm. Dubbed Solana Ventures, the firm announced Friday that it, alongside FTX and Lightspeed Venture Partners, would invest $100 million into the game studios and technology sector.

In doing so, Solana Ventures aims to attract desktop and mobile video game developers to build their projects atop its public blockchain, thereby raising the prospect of higher SOL adoption. A similar adoption boom in 2021 helped send the SOL price up by almost 17,500% YTD — from $1.51 to $262.45.

*Solana ecosystem in a nutshell. Source: Solanians Telegram Channel*

The uptrend surfaced as speculators started treating Solana as one of the most serious challengers to Ethereum, the leading smart contracts platform grappling with higher gas fees and network congestion issues.

For instance, Solana claims that it could process 50,000-60,000 transactions per second (tps) for an average transaction fee of $0.00025. In comparison, Ethereum transacts 15-30 tps, with its median transaction cost ranging between $4 and $21.

*Smart contract platforms comparison. Source: Solwealth*

Paul Veradittakit, a partner at Pantera Capital, told Bloomberg, called Solana "the top competition" to Ethereum, Cardano, and other smart contract platforms, regarding "developer adoption and momentum."

Nonetheless, Solana also exhibited signs of resource exhaustion, i.e., a lack of prioritization among SOL transactions and a lower number of validators that led to an eighteen-hour long network outage in September. If not fixed, it could raise the risks of reversed or altered transactions across the Solana network.

Correction risks for SOL price

Despite its latest rally to an all-time high, SOL risks undergoing a correction due to at least two bearish indicators.

First, the SOL price has been forming a Rising Wedge, a technical pattern that typically results in lower prices. And second, the cryptocurrency has also been confirming a bearish divergence between its rising price and declining momentum (as confirmed by lower highs on its daily relative strength index).

*SOL/USD daily price chart featuring rising wedge and price-momentum divergence. Source: TradingView*

A break below the Wedge's lower trendline, if accompanied by an increase in volume, would risk sending the SOL price lower by as much as the maximum height. That roughly puts SOL's downside target to levels between $205 and $91.52, depending on the level at which the bearish breakout begins.

Solana battles Cardano for the top-five spot as SOL market cap crosses $70B-mark

November 3, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Solana battles Cardano for the top-five spot as SOL market cap crosses B-mark

ADA price

Solana price rallied to a new record high while SOL entered the top-five cryptocurrencies by market cap for the first time.

Solana's (SOL) autumn rally continued on Nov. 3 with its price and market cap hitting a new record high.

SOL surged by 7% in the past 24 hours to $236, pushing its market capitalization to over $70 billion for the first time in history. As the token wobbled near its record high levels, it flipped Cardano (ADA) briefly to become the world's fifth-most valuable crypto asset.

Currently, SOL's market cap was around $69.37 billion, just $500 shy of ADA's $69.87 billion market valuation.

*Top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap (as of 1230 UTC, Nov. 3). Source: Messari*

Solana rallies on NFT craze

Solana battling for the top-five cryptocurrency spot came on the heels of SOL's renewed upside strength heading into the fourth and the final quarter of 2021. For instance, the Solana blockchain's native token grew by over 65% since Oct. 1. On the other hand, ADA's returns in the same period came out to be just 2.13%.

ADA underperformed primarily on "sell-the-news" sentiment. As Cointelegraph covered, the Cardano token started plunging right after it rolled out its much-awaited smart contracts functionality via a so-called Alonzo upgrade on Sept. 13.

*ADA/USDT three-day price chart. Source: TradingView*

In the days leading up to the hard fork, ADA's best year-to-date returns were around 1,630%. At press time, they came out to be around 1,050%. In comparison, SOL's YTD returns at the time of this writing were over 12,700%.

Independent market analyst Pentoshi credited the rising number of nonfungible token (NFT) projects on Solana as one of the main reasons behind its price boom, recalling a tweet from Aug. 16 that accurately predicted a bull run for the token.

$Sol has passed $Ada and taken the #3 spot

Balance has been restored in the world

The Endless #solana summer https://t.co/DD18hgroEJ
— Pentoshi Won’t Dm You. hates Dm’s. DM's are scams (@Pentosh1) November 2, 2021

Messari's researcher Mayson Nystrom also noted a "formidable growth" of NFTs in the Solana ecosystem, noting that the blockchain processed $500 million worth of total NFT secondary sales volumes since April 2021. Excerpts:

"Whether or not Solana can manifest this initial energy into long-term NFT growth is yet to be determined, but current signs present valid reasons to be optimistic about Solana's burgeoning NFT ecosystem."

*Solana versus Ethereum NFT statistics. Messari*

SOL to hit $275 next?

SOL's latest run-up to its record high also came as a breakout out of its Bullish Pennant structure, as shown in the chart below.

*SOL/USDT daily price chart featuring Bullish Pennant setup. Source: TradingView*

Bullish Pennants appear as the price consolidates inside a Triangle-like structure after logging a strong move higher, dubbed as Flagpole. Traders typically wait for the price to break above the Triangle's upper trendline before placing their profit target at a length equal to the Flagpole's height.

Solana's Flagpole height is rough, $175. As a result, its breakout move from the Triangle's resistance trendline (~$158) prompts SOL to grow by another $175, thereby setting its profit target above $275.

Solana reclaims $200 — 3 reasons why SOL price is up 35% in seven days

October 25, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Solana reclaims 0 — 3 reasons why SOL price is up 35% in seven days

ADA price

SOL price continues to climb, with Solana’s TVL also hitting a new high of nearly $14 billion.

The price of Solana’s native SOL coin edged up on Oct. 25 in the wake of a marketwide rally led by Bitcoin (BTC), with the total value locked (TVL) on Solana hitting record highs and SOL’s price seeing a promising technical setup.

Bitcoin triggers marketwide rally

SOL climbed by more than 6% to hit an intraday high of around $214. The price of SOL is now up a little over 35% over the past week, pushing it closer to its record high of about $222 set in early September.

Bitcoin’s run-up to its new record high of $67,000 last week resulted in the total crypto market capitalization passing the $2.5-trillion mark, a new milestone for the cryptocurrency.

*Top 10 cryptocurrencies and their performance over the last seven days. Source: Messari*

That helped push SOL higher, with rival cryptocurrencies Ether (ETH) and Cardano’s ADA also jumping by over 10% and 1% in the past week, respectively.

Solana TVL hits record high

The SOL price rally also appeared as the TVL of all the decentralized finance (DeFi) projects built on the Solana blockchain reached a new record high of $13.53 billion, as per data aggregator service DeFi Llama.

*Solana TVL hits another high. Source: Defi Llama*

The most dominant DeFi project on the Solana blockchain is Saber , an automated market maker (AMM) protocol that enables Solana users and applications to trade between stable pairs of assets efficiently and earn yields by providing liquidity to the platform.

Its contribution to the Solana liquidity pool was $2.05 billion at press time.

Meanwhile, there are four other DeFi projects with a TVL of more than $1 billion. These include Raydium ($1.91 billion), Sunny ($1.73 billion), Serum ($1.69 billion), and Marinade Finance ($1.63 billion).

Solana also declared that it would add more DeFi projects to its list after the completion of its “Ignition” hackathon on Oct. 18. Users would need to hold SOL tokens to use these applications, to pay for transaction fees, thus raising the prospect of the token’s higher demand in the future.

SOL price technicals

SOL’s latest price rally came as part of a breakout move out of what appears like a Bullish Pennant. As Cointelegraph reported earlier, the technical outlook aims to send SOL to levels equal to the maximum distance between the Pennant’s upper and lower trendline around $85.

*SOL/USD daily price chart featuring Pennant breakout. Source: TradingView*

As a result, adding $85 to the breakout level around $158, the SOL price’s Pennant target is $243, i.e., almost $250. Meanwhile, a retest of the pennant’s upper trendline as support would risk invalidating the bullish setup.

Better call SOL: Month-long consolidation puts Solana price en route to $275

October 15, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Better call SOL: Month-long consolidation puts Solana price en route to 5

Coin Telegraph

SOL has been forming a Bull Pennant following its 14,200% year-to-date price rally.

Solana (SOL) price technicals suggest SOL can hit $275 in the coming sessions.

The upside outlook for the world's sixth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization comes as it consolidates inside a range that appears like a Bull Pennant.

In detail, Bull Pennants are bullish continuation indicators that form as the price consolidates inside a Symmetrical Triangle-like structure following a strong move upside.

The consolidation trend accompanies declining volumes, reflecting on the trend's underlying weakness.

And, as the price approached the apex—the point where the Pennant's trendlines converge, it tends to undergo a breakout to the upside, with the bull target at length equal to the height of the previous uptrend, i.e., Flagpole.

*SOL/USDT daily price chart featuring bull pennant setup. Source: TradingView*

Solana's flagpole height is roughly $125. That said, a breakout move at the Pennant's apex (at around $150) puts SOL en route to $275.

SOL/BTC pair also gains despite Bitcoin at $60K

Solana's prospects of hitting $275 come amid an overall price boom across the crypto market.

However, SOL price also rallied by 8% against Bitcoin (BTC) in the past two days in part due to its listing o South Korea's top crypto exchange Upbit.

Overall, SOL has been one of the best performing altcoins in 2021, with its year-to-date profits at 8,500%. SOL traded at a record high of $216 in early September.

Institutional inflows boost SOL price

Despite Bitcoin currently in the limelight, Solana's price likely also received a boost from institutional capital via dedicated investment funds, according to a report from CoinShares published earlier this week.

"Digital asset investment products saw inflows 500 totaling US$226 million, bringing the 8 week run of inflows to US$638 million," CoinShares noted, adding:

"It was a mixed picture in other altcoins with recent favorites Solana (US$12.5 million) and Cardano (US$3 million) continuing to see inflows, suggesting the focus hasn’t entirely switched to Bitcoin.

*Institutional inflows into crypto funds by asset. Source: CoinShares, Bloomberg*

Solana chart ‘bull flag’ eyes $250 despite SOL price down 40% since last week

September 17, 2021 Coin Telegraph

<div>Solana chart 'bull flag' eyes 0 despite SOL price down 40% since last week</div>

Coin Telegraph

Meanwhile, the SOL's latest downside move forms a classic bullish continuation structure, with a profit target above $250.

Solana (SOL) price extended its slide on Sept. 17 as a major network outage over the past week — pointing to heightened security risks — hit traders' confidence.

The SOL/USD exchange rate fell up to 13.27% to its intraday low of $133.53 in a corrective trend that began after it topped out near $221.38 on Sept 9. As a result, SOL's price has almost crashed by 40% since its all-time high last week, despite more than tripling their value in the past 30 days.

Outage hurts SOL price

Solana backers tout its layer-1 blockchain solutions as a direct competitor to Ethereum. That is mainly due to its potential to ensure higher speed and lower transactions costs than the world's leading smart contracts platform.

However, on Sept. 14, Solana suffered a denial-of-service disruption, wherein a spike in transaction load — of up to 400,000 per second — overwhelmed its network. As a result, Solana's mainnet beta suffered 18-hours of instability, forcing decentralized applications (dApps) working atop its blockchain to become unusable.

1/ Solana Mainnet Beta encountered a large increase in transaction load which peaked at 400,000 TPS. These transactions flooded the transaction processing queue, and lack of prioritization of network-critical messaging caused the network to start forking.
— Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) September 14, 2021

The root cause of the issue was reportedly a decentralized exchange, Raydium. On it, bots attempted to buy SOL tokens and, as a result, flooded the network with up to 400,000 transactions per second. On the other hand, Solana validators failed to prioritize transactions, causing a chain split.

SOL/USD rates fell up to 19.17% to $137.15 on Sept. 14, only to rebound sharply later to close the day at a 6.47% loss. Nonetheless, the sell-off continued in the next sessions, driven by fears that Solana is more centralized than its top rival Ethereum.

Gavin Wood, the co-founder of Ethereum and another rival blockchain network Polkadot, pointed that Solana functions with an "exclusive and closed set of servers," which somewhat increases its network's speed but comes at the cost of lower decentralization.

The comments appeared as Ethereum successfully withstood against the same attack.

Lol, WTF is going on today? $sol goes offline for a few hours#arbitrum goes down for almost an hour#ethereum got attacked (unsuccessfully)
— Lark Davis (@TheCryptoLark) September 15, 2021

In a tweet issued Thursday, Solana promised to take more proactive steps against potential hacking attempts. The foundation also announced that it would publish a "detailed post-mortem" analysis in the coming weeks.

Bull flag e

SOL/USD expects to resume its prevailing bullish momentum despite the price correction as it paints a classic technical structure with an upside outlook.

Dubbed Bull Flag, the pattern forms when the price consolidate lower in a descending channel (FLAG) following a strong move upward (FLAGPOLE). Ultimately, the price breaks above the channel's upper trendline, typically rising by as much as the Flagpole's height.

*SOL/USD four-hour price chart featuring Bull Flag pattern. Source: TradingView.com*

Solana's recent price action has led it to form a similar Bull Flag pattern. As a result, its next attempt to break above the Channel's upper trendline could lead its price as high as the flagpole's height, which comes to be around $107.

As a result, SOL/USD could reach $250.

Uniswap (UNI) price jumps by 15% in DeFi, cryptocurrency market rebound

September 15, 2021 Coin Telegraph

ADAUSD

The jump in UNI/USD rates has quickly met with sellers at local top levels.

Uniswap (UNI) was among the best performers among the top-cap cryptocurrency tokens in the previous 24 hours, logging better gains than some top cryptocurrencies, namely Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and Binance Coin (BNB).

On Sept. 15, the UNI/USD exchange rate jumped 13.26% to hit its seven-day high $25.68. Traders continued to bid higher on the pair entering Wednesday, pushing its value higher to $26.07 at one point in time, up more than 15% from the previous session's open of $22.66.

Market-wide recovery behind UNI gains?

A majority of Uniswap's gains in the previous 24 hours seems to have surfaced in the wake of a market-wide recovery.

For instance, the said timeframe witnessed Bitcoin, the benchmark cryptocurrency that enjoys heavy influence on the rest of the crypto tokens, climbed above $47,000 following a 4.85% upside move on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Ethereum saw its native asset ETH rallying toward $3,500 in a 4.57% price jump.

Elsewhere in the crypto market, Binance Coin, XRP, Dogecoin, Luna, and Chainlink also rose. In contrast, smart contracts platform Solana's native asset SOL fell 6.47% following a denial-of-service disruption on its network.

At the same time, Cardano (ADA), one of Solana's top rivals, dropped by more than 1%.

*The performance of the top 15 cryptocurrencies in the past 24 hours. Source: TradingView.com*

At first, the gains among the top tokens, including Uniswap, looked to have been helped by capital rotations out of SOL and ADA markets.

In detail, Solana's market cap surged by more than 400% quarter-to-date following its foray into the booming nonfungible token (NFT) sector, providing traders a decent opportunity to lock interim profits. Additionally, the network outage accelerated the profit-taking scenario.

Solana mainnet-beta is experiencing intermittent instability. This began approximately 45 minutes ago, and engineers are investigating the issue.
— Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) September 14, 2021

On the other hand, Cardano attracted speculation because of its Alonzo upgrade that made it a smart contracts platform for the first time since launch. In addition, it's 2,500% year-to-date performance gave traders adequate opportunities to "sell the news" and secure gains.

UNI holders are masters of 9.15M MIR tokens

Uniswap's superior performance in the previous 24 hours also took cues from speculation that holding UNI could grant them access to airdrop tokens.

In a recent note, Brendon Murray, content marketing manager at Boston-based blockchain analysis firm Flipside Crypto, cited Twitter user jr3225's research. The study cited many UNI holders failed to realize that they could claim 9.15 million of the synthetic asset platform Mirror Protocol's MIR tokens via a December 2020 airdrop.

In comparison, LUNA stakers could claim more free MIR tokens than UNI ones—MIR/USD has surged 200% this year.

*Total MIR claimed on the y-axis, airdrop-type on the x-axis. Source: @jr3225*

The report, published Tuesday, coincided with the UNI price pump.

Uniswap technical outlook

Uniswap's latest rally had it test a support confluence made up of falling trendline resistance and the 38.2% Fib line (~$26.093) of a Fibonacci retracement graph (drawn from a $42.89-swing high to $15.70-swing low).

*UNI/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView.com*

Sellers took control near the confluence, prompting UNI/USD to correct by 4.59% to an intraday low of $24.50. Its next support target is—again—a confluence of 23.6% Fib line ($22.12) and the ascending trendline that overall constitutes a Rising Channel.

An interim bullish outlook entails UNI/USD breaking above $26.09 and step towards the next Fib levels ($29.30, $32.51, and so on) unless the pair reaches the Rising Channel's upper trendline near $42.89.

Meanwhile, a bearish setup could see UNI/USD break below $22.12 Fib line and the Channel support to target $15.70.

Solana rally mimicking Ethereum? Why a $500 SOL price target could be ‘conservative’

September 9, 2021 Coin Telegraph

<div>Solana rally mimicking Ethereum? Why a 0 SOL price target could be 'conservative'</div>

ADAUSD

The sixth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap remains one of the best performers despite the overall crypto market losing more than $200 billion.

A high-flying Solana (SOL) refused to land even in the face of a brutal sell-off in the cryptocurrency market on Tuesday. Two days later, the price of SOL rebounded to another new all-time high.

The SOL/USD exchange rate averted a big pullback over the previous 48 hours and reached $217 for the first time in history.

The pair's ability to sustain bearish pressure underscored investors' growing interest in Solana's blockchain as an emerging rival to Ethereum, a public ledger currently leading the decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible token (NFT) sector boom.

*SOL/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView.com*

"The SOL outperformance in the market recently is more or less the continuation of its growth run in recent times," said Peter Kozyakov, co-founder and CEO at payment service firm Mercuryo.

"With more than two different NFT project launches and minting going on in the ecosystem per day, there is an unending demand for SOL from retail buyers. As a result, it has kept the price up more than 50% this week despite a market-wide crash."

In detail, Solana hosted the launch of the NFT Degenerate Ape Academy on Aug. 15, which featured a collection of 10,000 cartoon apes. They were sold out in just 8 minutes and involved 96,000 SOL or about $5.9 million.

Solana continued its foray into the NFT space by enabling an FTX-backed digital collectibles marketplace earlier this week. FTX, a crypto derivatives platform, revealed that their new NFT venture would enable NFT creators and owners to trade their digital arts cross-chain using Solana and Ethereum.

Solana beats top rivals

The cryptocurrency market wiped more than $200 billion off its valuation following a sudden sell-off Tuesday. The leading digital asset by market cap, Bitcoin (BTC), saw its prices plunge from over $52,000 to almost $42,000 within minutes, which analysts largely blame on cascading long liquidations.

Alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins), which more or less tail the Bitcoin trend, dropped in tandem, with the second-largest Ether plunging by up to 23.41% and its runner-up—another smart contract rival—Cardano (ADA) dropping by 30.89%.

*Solana's top rivals Ethereum and Cardano price performance. Source: TradingView.com*

However, Solana was an exception in the sea of red. While the SOL/USD wobbled violently between gains and losses, it eventually closed the day 5.45% higher and followed it with extended upside moves in the sessions ahead.

The pair has surged almost 890% after bottoming out on July 20 at $21.96. At the same time, the total value locked inside Solana-based DeFi projects has crossed $7.81 billion, per data provided by SolanaProject.com.

Greg Waisman, co-founder, and chief operating officer at Mercuryo, told Cointelegraph that he anticipates SOL to reach $500 by the end of 2021. He noted:

"Solana’s growth runs appear to be mimicking that of Ethereum (ETH) and Binance Coin (BNB), and the $500 projection may turn out to be a conservative one for the coin."

SOL price nears $200 after FTX’s Solana-enabled NFT marketplace goes live

September 7, 2021 Coin Telegraph

SOL price nears 0 after FTX’s Solana-enabled NFT marketplace goes live

Altcoin

The latest bout of buying has pushed SOL/USD’s quarter-to-date gains up by more than 450%.

Solana (SOL) bulls have largely ignored its overvaluation risks as the blockchain asset goes after another milestone price level.

The SOL/USD exchange rate almost reached $200 on Tuesday as investors continued to treat Solana as a long-term competitor to Ethereum, the world’s leading smart contracts platform.

More bullish evidence came on Monday after Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of crypto derivatives platform FTX, announced Solana’s integration into FTX’s upcoming nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace.

On Monday, Bankman-Fried revealed that the new marketplace would enable NFT creators and owners to trade their digital arts cross-chain using Solana and Ethereum. The platform would also make it possible to trade NFT collections from rivaling marketplace OpenSea on FTX.

The NFT marketplace went live on Monday and is hosted by FTX.US, a United States-regulated cryptocurrency exchange backed by FTX. That enables United States users to mint and trade NFTs via FTX.

NFT boom behind Solana rally

NFTs exist on blockchains, the public ledger technology that keeps track of who owns the digital assets. Therefore, performing tasks such as minting an NFT token or processing digital asset transactions entail a fee.

Most NFT-related transactions take place on Ethereum, even though the network suffers from higher congestion and inflated gas fees. Data fetched by EtherScan shows that Ethereum’s gas fees reached their highest levels since May last week.

“As NFT activity commands ecosystem attention, gas prices have risen to daily levels that price out many retail traders,” Luke Posey, a researcher at blockchain analytics firm Glassnode, wrote in a note on Wednesday.

*Ethereum gas fees (in Gwei) in the last three months. Source: YCharts*

Solana’s public base-layer blockchain protocol proposes to do away with Ethereum’s performance bottlenecks. In addition, its lowered gas fees have made it an emerging player in the NFT industry, backed by the launch of dedicated digital collectibles marketplaces such as Solanart, DigitalEyes and its integration into music streaming platform Audius.

Major players in the crypto space have recognized Solana’s potential against Ethereum. In June, Bankman-Fried-backed Alameda Research led a $314-million funding round for Solana, which was also funded by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain Capital and CoinShares.

SOL to $500?

Greg Waisman, co-founder and chief operation officer of payment network Mercuryo, envisioned exponential growth for the Solana ecosystem based on its growing adoption among the decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFT space.

He believes Solana’s boom is similar to Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, adding that it would boost SOL/USD exchange rate to as high as $500 in the second half of 2021. He said:

“Solana is potentially a $500 digital coin, and the price growth of Solana in recent times points to the capacity of the token to receive enough boost to hit this mark before the end of H2 2021.”

*SOL/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView*

On the flip side, analysts at JPMorgan Chase warned clients about overvaluation risks in the altcoin and NFT space, stating that the recent rally is “more likely to be a reflection of froth and retail investor ‘mania’ rather than a reflection of a structural uptrend.”

On Tuesday, SOL/USD’s quarter-to-date returns reached a little over 450% as it established its all-time high at $196.78. Since then, the pair has already pulled back as traders take profits.

Solana extends rally with another new high — Why is SOL price up by 70% in one week?

September 3, 2021 Coin Telegraph

audius

The SOL price rally also appeared in the wake of “Ignition,” a global hackathon to build new platforms on the Solana blockchain.

Solana (SOL) started Friday at a new record high as investors continued to bet positively on its success in the decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible tokens (NFT) sector.

The SOL/USD exchange rate reached $146.28 for the first time in history, following a 35% month-to-date rally. The huge upside move lifted the pair’s returns for the year above 7,500%, taking Solana’s market capitalization over $41 billion to make it the seventh-most valuable project in the cryptocurrency space.

Solana’s run-up to record highs also brought overvaluation risks in focus, with a classic momentum indicator, the relative strength index (RSI), returning an overbought reading for the cryptocurrency. Above 70, the RSI suggested that SOL/USD could undergo a sell-off in the coming sessions and that opening a long position on the pair could prove risky.

*SOL/USD daily chart featuring RSI. Source: TradingView*

But analysts noted that it is hard to call the Solana top just yet. An independent market analyst, known by the pseudonym The Crypto Dog, advised speculators to just let Solana ride and see where it goes with its current strength.

Yuriy Mazur, head of data analytics at cryptocurrency exchange CEX.IO, anticipates that SOL/USD rates will cross above $150 in the coming sessions. But he, too, noted that the pair had entered a “price discovery” stage, and its upcoming bias relies on how well Solana emerges in the DeFi and the NFT space.

“The price of Solana (SOL) is on the uptrend as the blockchain is currently showcasing its potentials in serving as a viable alternative hub for all things Decentralized Finance and Nonfungible Tokens,” Mazur told Cointelegraph via email.

“The growth of Solana to $146.28 is steered positively by the increasing demand for the tokens for use in minting thousands of NFTs being launched on the Solana blockchain.”

On most NFT and DeFi platforms, users pay for the transaction costs required to process and validate transactions on the blockchain. The so-called gas fees change as per the network. Ethereum hosts most NFT and DeFi projects via smart contracts supporting its native token Ether (ETH), though this is also why the network suffers from excessive fee issues.

Mazur said investors now consider Solana a potential long-term rival to Ethereum, especially when providing lower gas fees and higher scalability. He cited Audius, a blockchain-enabled music streaming platform that integrated Solana to support its NFT project.

“Solana is still proving itself to be a resilient and a better alternative to Ethereum,” the analyst explained.

“It has a long way to go in terms of becoming a major DeFi and NFT infrastructure [...] However, to sustain its growth, better upgrades and features must be unveiled to beat competition from other blockchains, including Cardano and Ethereum.”

Mysterious event revealed as a hackathon

More bullish backstops for Solana appeared following its global hackathon launch, dubbed as Ignition, on Tuesday, which will run until Oct. 8. The contest attempts to draw talent and ideas to the Solana public blockchain to drive growth and innovation.

Ignition will distribute over $5 million worth of rewards and seed funding, including prizes from event sponsors, such as Microsoft, Jump Capital and Standard Chartered. Mango Markets, the leading Solana-based decentralized exchange and the winner of one of the recent hackathons, will also add $30,000 to the prize reserves.

Speculators earlier misidentified Ignition as a SOL burning event, which helped to send SOL prices above $100 for the first time in history on Monday.

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