The price of SOL has continued its upward movement, bearing the $80 level and taking XRP’s position as the fifth-largest crypto.
Solana (SOL) price broke the $80 barrier on Wednesday and has continued to rise, hitting $85.24 as of this writing. The 12.57% jump over the last 24 hours has made SOL the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, beating out XRP for the first time. This is also the first time SOL has scaled $82 since May 2022.
According to data from MarketWatch, SOL has jumped 14.98% in the last 5 days and nearly 52% in 1 month. The asset has also recorded a 338% surge over the last 3 months, and a whopping 774% advance since January. Solana’s price increase has become so impressive that observers and analysts are starting to ask whether or not Ethereum (ETH) can withstand competition from Solana in the long run. The main argument in Solana’s favor is that it is much faster and processes transactions at considerably cheaper fees.
According to a user on X (formerly Twitter), Solana’s efforts at expanding mobile access are an important factor in the platform’s rising momentum. The ease and accessibility mobile access brings is a point in the blockchain’s favor, and can easily make all of the difference regarding increased adoption. The post continues, saying that new users may not care that a platform is “adequately decentralized” or if its native token is a “non-sovereign money contender”. as long as other factors, like mobile support, are intact.
The current SOL price has already scaled a Wednesday prediction, suggesting that SOL’s market cap would rise above XRP’s. At the time, SOL’s market cap was $32.89 billion over XRP’s $33 billion. The report also suggested SOL would hit $80. At $85.24, SOL is more than 6% over the forecast.
Factors Affecting SOL’s Price
Several factors are working in favor of SOL, and contributing to the pump. For instance, activity in decentralized applications (dApps) on the Solana network has increased considerably. According to major decentralized finance (DeFi) data aggregator DefiLlama, the total value locked on SOL is $1.158 billion. This is a 96% growth from the $654 million recorded less than a month ago on November 29. The fifth-largest platform by TVL, Solana’s 24-hour volume is $1.591 billion, the second largest, and only slightly below Ethereum’s $1.65 billion. Interestingly, fees on SOL in the same period came in at $189,011, much lower than Ethereum’s $13.83 million, Tron’s $1.32 million, and BSC’s $550,894.
There are also several expected updates that may have contributed to Solana’s climb. The Solana community is expecting token launches and airdrops for a few projects, including Jupiter (JUP), Bonkwifhat (BIF), Phantom, Meow Coin (MEOW), and Drift. Furthermore, hardware wallet company Trevor announced support for Solana’s SPL tokens.
There also is the Bonk (BONK) meme coin on Solana, which recently became the third-largest. In the past month, BONK has jumped more than 1,000%, becoming popular enough for Binance to announce a listing. In addition to Binance, Coinbase has added support for BONK.
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