Solana Sinks Below $10 for First Time in Nearly Two Years

Even with the prices for top cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum sitting relatively stable over the last month, Solana has continued to bleed out. Early this morning, the once-surging altcoin fell below the $10 mark—the first time it has done so in almost two years.

Solana (SOL) hit a recent low of $9.90 early on Wednesda, per data from CoinGecko, although it has rebounded slightly to an even $10 as of this writing. The last time that Solana traded for less than $10 was in February 2021, just as the cryptocurrency was beginning its ascent.

Six months later, Solana exploded in price and began a meteoric rise in value that would top out at nearly $260 per coin in November 2021. Since then, Solana has shed nearly 96% of its value, compared to a 76% drop for Bitcoin and Ethereum from their respective all-time highs the same month. 

Solana’s accelerated bleeding over the past several weeks was jump-started in large part by the collapse of FTX and Alameda Research, the two companies founded by Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). The one-time billionaire was a vocal supporter of Solana and had invested significantly in both SOL and the Solana ecosystem.

As the FTX empire crumbled in early November amid a liquidity crunch, the layer-1 blockchain platform’s coin took a much harder hit than most leading cryptocurrencies, apparently due to the close association to SBF and his companies. SOL was valued above $37 in the days leading up to FTX’s downfall.

Although Solana’s losses stabilized in early December, with the coin’s price hovering around the $13 mark, it has shed significant value over the past two weeks. SOL is down 8% today, 19% over the past week, and 29% over the past 30 days. Bitcoin is actually up 1% over the past 30 days, while Ethereum is down a fraction of a percentage point during the same span.

Solana’s latest decline comes following news on December 25 that two of the blockchain platform’s most popular and valuable NFT projects, DeGods and y00ts, will be bridged to other platforms in early 2023 in an effort to expose them to larger audiences.

DeGods will be bridged to Ethereum, letting users transfer their assets to the leading platform for NFTs and decentralized apps (dapps). Meanwhile, y00ts will be bridged to Polygon, an Ethereum scaling network, thanks in part to a grant from Polygon Studios to make the move. Furthermore, the associated DUST token will be bridged to both Ethereum and Polygon.