Solana approaches $100 – Meme coin craze drives rise | CoinDesk JAPAN

Solana (SOL) neared $100 on December 22nd amid continued hype about blockchain’s fast transactions, low fees, and the speculative appeal of meme coin issuance.

According to the index, Solana has perhaps the strongest popularity among on-chain traders, with trading volume and network fees outpacing Ethereum, which is typically the most expensive, for seven days in a row.

The value locked in Solana applications has increased from $400 million (approximately 56 billion yen, exchange rate: 1 dollar = 140 yen) in November to the equivalent of $1.3 billion (approximately 182 billion yen), reaching the level of July 2022. reached.

These factors have pushed SOL’s year-to-date increase to more than 830%, with the largest increases occurring in the past two months. The buying pressure continues despite significant selling pressure from the bankruptcy trustee of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange that held billions of dollars worth of SOL. It was trading around $94 in the morning European time, according to data from CoinDesk Indices.

The dog-themed BONK gained attention in late November when its stock soared more than 1,000%. Inspired by this, meme coins like dogwifhat (WIF) have sprung up, giving early buyers more than 10,000% returns in a short period of time.

WIF has increased its market capitalization by another 35% in the past 24 hours alone and shows no signs of slowing down amid huge hype in X crypto circles.

Data shows that thousands of meme coins have been issued by opportunistic developers. Most of these have risen from very low market capitalizations to millions of dollars.

Solana-based meme coins minted in the last 24 hours. (Birdeye)

On the other hand, some analysts point out that the driving force behind token growth may be retail investor interest, and expect SOL’s outperformance to continue.

“Solana has rebounded steadily better than most of its major competitors, demonstrating significant interest in Solana in the community, and promises to continue to outperform the market in the coming months. About Solana “Google searches have surged 250% in the past two months,” Alex Kuptsikevich, senior market analyst at FxPro, said in a note to CoinDesk on Tuesday. “The amount of user interest is consistent with the explosive growth in assets and associated meme coin price increases.”

“Solana blockchain continues to grow strongly on the back of new protocols and related airdrops,” Kapchikevich added, adding that in the past few weeks Solana users have received BONK, Access’s ACS, and Jito’s JTO’s airdrops. I’m talking about drops.

｜Translation: CoinDesk JAPAN
｜Edited by: Toshihiko Inoue
｜Image: Shutterstock
｜Original text: Solana Nears $100 as Meme Coin Frenzy Continues to Drive Rally