Solana’s SOL Surges to Record High Above $260

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Continuing a massive comeback from a crypto winter price collapse of more than 95%, (SOL), the native token of the Solana blockchain, has shattered its all-time high reached in October 2021.
At press time, SOL was trading just above $263, higher by 11% over the past 24 hours and nearly 360% on a year-over-year basis.
The new record came two years after the downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire FTX and Alameda Research, prominent backers of the Solana ecosystem. SOL plummeted to as low as $8 late in 2022 before beginning its turnaround to the current level.
Now having survived 2022’s near-fatal blow, Solana is benefitting from multiple catalysts, including bustling meme coin trading and surging decentralized finance (DeFi) activity on the network, as well as increasing institutional interest.
Read more: ‘It’s So Early’: How Solana Is Competing With Ethereum for Institutional Interest
Of that institutional interest, the odds of there soon being a U.S.-based spot Solana ETF have increased greatly with the election of crypto-friendly Donald Trump two weeks ago. Earlier Thursday, crypto foe and SEC Chairman Gary Gensler announced his intention to fully resign from the commission on Jan. 20 as Trump takes office. Also earlier today, Fox News reported on constructive talks between the SEC and possible SOL ETF issuers.
Edited by Stephen Alpher.
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Stephen Alpher is CoinDesk’s managing editor for Markets. He holds BTC above CoinDesk’s disclosure threshold of $1,000.
Krisztian Sandor is a reporter on the U.S. markets team focusing on stablecoins and institutional investment. He holds BTC and ETH.