Sudden rise of Solana takes crypto markets by surprise
Solana’s relentless upward drive showed little sign of easing today as the altcoin improved on yesterday’s all-time high to nudge close to $75.
Solana entered the top ten of cryptocurrencies by market cap on Monday after smashing through a series of new levels to hit $68.71.
But the four-year-old asset – brainchild of Anatoly Yakovenko – took things a step further this morning by setting the bar at $74.42.
Its native SOL token has been the stand-out performer during the recent cryptocurrency surge of the last few days.
While most eyes were on Bitcoin’s drive above $47,000, Ethereum’s return to $3,000 and Cardano’s impressive momentum up the market rankings, few were noticing Solana’s remarkable lift-off from sub-$35 to a huge weekly increase of almost 70 per cent.
The reason for the sudden and dramatic interest in Solana’s open infrastructure blockchain has left many analysts scratching their heads, but it looks increasingly likely that the up-and-down craze for NFTs may be the cause.
Scalability test through Solanart
Solana’s ecosystem undertook a huge scalability test over the weekend after hosting the ‘Degenerate Ape Academy’ on its Solanart NFT platform.
The collection of 10,000 artworks sold out in under 10 minutes. Each piece was ‘minted’ using the SOL token.
SOL has subsided to $65 from it’s move towards $75 earlier today as it fell in line with a wider trend of falls across the board this afternoon.
Bitcoin was the first to falter as it lost its grip on an attempt to clear $47,000 again. The flagship cryptocurrency has since subsequently fallen to just above $45k and into the arms of waiting support which proved itself to be robust yesterday.
Ethereum, as it often does, followed Bitcoin’s path to the letter, dropping from a high of $3,282 to what appears to be a potential safety net around the $3,150 mark.
Cardano, on the other hand, seems to be experiencing a deeper descent. Showing few signs of slowing, its decline over the last seven hours from $2.10 to $2.03 will no doubt cause some nerves as ADA gets closer to the prospect of losing traction above $2.