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Acting editor-in-chief
Gary McFarlane
Acting editor-in-chief
Gary McFarlane
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The Solana price (SOL) has broken through the bullish $241 target, with volume on the ecosystem’s decentralized exchanges (DEXs) booming in a seemingly unstoppable meme coin frenzy.
Layer 1 blockchain Solana’s price can reach $500 by year’s end as its speed and efficiency advantages over competitors like Ethereum continue to impact market positioning.
If Solana can hold the break above the crucial $241 level, then the next target for bulls is $291, which is well into price discovery territory – the SOL all-time high is $259.
It would be a steep climb to hit $500 by the end of the year, but even a shallower ascent would easily capture $350-$400 price range targets.
DEX daily volume on Raydium is more than double that of Ethereum-based Uniswap ($3.93 billion vs $1.45 billion), according to the latest DefiLlama data. Solana DApps are also seeing record fees and revenue.
Solana price to rocket as meme coins explode in value – pump.fun market cap passes $8 billion
Behind the surge is the explosive growth of meme coins on the Solana chain, which has become the de facto home of meme coins, helped by the pump.fun launchpad breakout success.
Through its clever implementation of bonding curves that abstract away complexity through its user-friendly design, pump.fun enables anyone to quickly spin up a meme coin at the click of a button at minimal cost.
The pump.fun ecosystem is today valued at $8.2 billion with an equally impressive 24-hour trading volume of $4.3 billion.
Leading the charge on pump.fun is Peanut the Squirrel ($PNUT), commanding a market value of $1.6 billion a little more than two weeks since its launch.
Since its listing on Raydium on November 3 at $0.075 the $PNUT price has surged 2,046% to $1.61. If you had bought it at its lowest point on the open market ($0.0318) you would have bagged a return of 5,099%.
Those who bought $PNUT on the bonding curve prior to its Raydium listing will be sitting on an even bigger return on investment.
To be listed on Raydium, tokens must reach a market cap of $69k. When that is achieved, $12,000 liquidity is deposited on Raydium and burned.
How to find the next PNUT on pump.fun
For those hunting for the next hot pump.fun token, the ‘about to graduate’ section in the advanced section of pump.fun shows users what’s in the imminent listings pipeline.
Pump.fun launchpad tokens are all fair sales, so there is no presale or team allocation.
If more evidence is needed of the growing dominance of Solana in the meme coins category, take a cursory glance at the CoinMarkeCap homepage:
Solana is now the second most valuable blockchain for running smart contracts. Its proof of stake and proof of history technology is proving its worth as a scalable solution for commercial activity, even though meme coins are, of course, largely vacuous viral efforts from the standpoint of their use value.
Robinhood and Coinbase help create weekend FOMO
Another couple of things have helped Solana over the past few days. Last week, Robinhood reversed its previous delisting of several coins, including Solana—it no longer thinks there is a danger that the formerly delisted need worry about the Securities and Exchange Commission’s unregistered securities diktats.
In addition, Coinbase launched its COIN50 index, which aims to help institutions track the market easily. Eligible institutions outside of the US, Canada, and the UK can trade the index.
Solana has a weighting of 6% in the COIN50. According to cryptonews.com calculations, the Solana market cap as a percentage of the total crypto market cap is 3.56%, so 6% represents an overweight position.
In other words if a fund or institution was looking to replicate the COIN50, they would need to buy more than the market cap weight of Solana. Bitcoin has a weighting of 50% in the Coinbase COIN50 index, while its actual dominance of total market capitalization stands at 59%.
Solana price – the institutions are coming; Sol Strategies and ETFs to smooth the way
Institutional interest in Solana is exploding as financial advisors and asset managers adjust their portfolios to allocate to crypto inside the 5% portion typically reserved for alternative asset classes, or those deemed high-risk and more speculative.
On that, Anchorage Digital CEO and co-founder Nathan McCauley told the Washington Post last week, “The next wave of crypto adoption likely won’t be driven by crypto-native individuals, but by mainstream investors who prefer to access digital assets through their existing wealth management and financial adviser relationships.” Anchorage is currently the only federally chartered crypto bank in the US.
Solana will be one of the top picks, alongside bitcoin, for inclusion in investment portfolios.
For those institutions not looking to hold the digital asset directly, there is also now a publicly traded Solana holding company called Sol Strategies (CYFRF, HODL.CN) available that invests directly in Solana and the network’s ecosystem. For instance, last week it bought four validators in a stock and cash deal to acquire Cogent Crypto.
As regulations become clearer and friendlier, the probability of Solana ETFs being approved has risen substantially since VanEck Digital Assets fired the Solana ETF starting gun with the first SEC filing on June 27 2024.
And things have moved on since the Financial Times reported on July 26 that VanEck Solana ETF’s success probably hinged on the outcome of the US presidential election:
Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck, confirmed on X that his company’s filing was a bet on a Trump victory. Legislation for crypto in Washington could also resolve the issue. But with a deadline of March, “a lot of things need to change and they have to change quite fast”, said Tischhauser.
Financial Times, July 26, 2024
Solana ecosystem development and adoption is going from strength to strength
Here’s a roundup of news from the Solana space, that shows the protocol improvements and adoption traction the ecosystem is seeing:
- The Breakpoint 2024 conference showcased advancements in ZK compression technology for Solana, aimed at reducing data storage costs and enhancing scalability.
- Firedancer is a game changer for future scalability, as Cryptonews.com reported in an interview with Valkyrie co-founder and Sol Strategies CEO Leah Wald earlier this month.
- The Solana Radar Hackathon attracted over 10,000 participants, highlighting the ecosystem’s vibrancy and innovative projects.
All told then, the challenges of network congestion are being addressed, with strategies proposed for optimizing transaction processing through priority fees.
Diversification is the name of the game – some meme coins to consider for your crypto portfolio
Pepe Unchained ($PEPU) is the first meme coin to have its own Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain. It’s raised just shy of $36 million in ICO, which finishes in 24 days, so there’s no time to lose if you wish to contribute. The project has raised an incredible $3.2 million since Friday. $PEPU could be the next Pepe.
The ecosystem includes Pepe’s Pump Pad, an Ethereum-focused pump.fun, where meme coins can be launched by literally clicking a few buttons.
The project is raising more than $1 million every 24 hours – whales can’t get enough of $PEPU, as this $67,319 buy attests. The price of the $PEPU token presale increases every 12 hours and at the time of writing is priced at $0.012891.
Anyone doubting the pulling power of the Pepe brand in crypto right now should take a look at an Elon Musk X post yesterday:
Crypto All-Stars ($STARS) is a meme coin ecosystem that introduces the innovative concept of unified staking for meme coins. The MemeVault Network allows meme coin fans to stake their tokens, but to maximize returns users need to hold the $STARS token.
Crypto investors like what they see – the presale raise total so far is $4.2 million. $STARS sells for $0.0015806 and there’s only around 72 hours to go before the next price rise. A whale has just bought $21,714 worth of $STARS.
Flockerz ($FLOCK) is ‘the people’s meme coin’. It is the first meme coin that will be run by its token owners through its vote-to-earn mechanism. Flockerz empowers its community – The Flock – to guide the project by voting on proposals and are rewarded for their participation. Flockerz has raised $2.2 million and is priced at $0.006053 in the current price stage, which ends in two days.
FreeDum Fighters is a PolitiFi-focused coin that has raised more than half a million dollars for its revolutionary vote-to-earn take on the thrills and spills of the political campaign trail, all with tongue-in-cheek memeification.
You can buy the presales mentioned above in the Best Wallet app. The wallet’s native token $BEST is for sale exclusively to Best Wallet users in a private sale.
Disclaimer: Crypto is a high-risk asset class. This article is provided for informational purposes and does not constitute investment advice. You could lose all of your capital.
