- Solana’s price hit $262 on Friday morning.
- Experts say it’s just the beginning of the rally.
- This is what’s driving the price and how FTX risks holding it back.
It finally happened.
Solana’s price reached a record $262 on Friday morning, but experts say it could climb even higher.
The world’s fourth biggest cryptocurrency — after Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether — hit the all-time high three years after breaking its previous record.
While the price has slumped below $260 since, traders will likely pile into Solana out of fear of missing out, and drive the price as high as $700, Philippe Bekhazi, CEO and Co-Founder crypto trading firm XBTO, told DL News.
“Then SOL could even overtake Ethereum,” in total value, said Bekhazi.
UK bank Standard Chartered projects that the cryptocurrency could climb close to $700 by the end of 2025.
The projections come against a backdrop of bullish macroeconomic factors, and as Bitwise, VanEck, 21shares, and Canary Capital have announced plans to launch spot Solana exchange-traded funds.
Trump euphoria
Solana is up 24% over the past week and almost 160% since the start of the year. It currently holds a $123 billion market cap — about 4% of the total crypto market.
Republicans winning the White House, Congress and Senate in the US elections is chief among the factors that have driven the rally.
A second Donald Trump presidency is seen as bullish for cryptocurrencies like Solana as he made several industry-friendly pledges during his campaign.
Geoffrey Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, said that the approval of a Solana ETF is more likely under a Trump administration.
Memecoins
Last week, Solana handled over $40 billion worth of transactions, more than doubling its previous weekly record of $17.5 billion set in March.
Traders looking to hit the jackpot on memecoins — sometimes with bizarre results — are fuelling the surge.
Memecoins don’t advertise a use case and are not tied to something of value. Instead they trade solely on popularity and hype
The number of active users has skyrocketed over 1,500% from the beginning of the year, with new daily addresses notching an eleven-fold increase over the same time period.
“The numbers really are remarkable,” André Dragosch, European head of research at Bitwise, told DL News earlier this week.
The FTX ghost
To be sure, some factors risk derailing the rally.
FTX is one of those factors. The failed crypto exchange announced Thursday that it will start to repay over $16 billion in assets to jilted customers in March.
While that’s great for people who lost money in the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire, it also means that a chunk of Solana tokens will hit the market at a discount.
Over 7 million in Solana was tied up in FTX’s bankruptcy. They will hit the market at discounted prices around $65, Bekhazi said.
“So we’d expect to see some weakness in price then,” he said.
Eric Johansson is DL News’ News Editor. Got a tip? Email at eric@dlnews.com.
