Solana’s price has plunged more than 50% from its all-time high as trading activity on its network slows amid concerns about its involvement in a scandal involving the Libra meme token and wider crypto market swoon.
SOL fell to $132 at one point Tuesday, its lowest point since October, before rebounding slightly, according to crypto markets data provider CoinGecko. The token of the Solana blockchain is currently down about 5% over the past 24 hours, as of this writing, at a current price of $144. Solana’s price hit $293 in early January.
The decline of the sixth-largest digital asset by market value has accelerated over the past 11 days after the Libra token—which is issued on the Solana platform—lost about 90% of its value in hours, sparking accusations of fraud and calls for the impeachment of Argentine President Javier Milei.
Milei had promoted the token that was supposed to help the country’s small businesses in a post on X. He subsequently deleted the post and denied knowledge about the details behind the coin’s creation.
Solana decentralized exchange trading volumes dropped to a five-week low of $2.61 billion last week, as meme coin trading—a top driver of activity on the network—dipped amid a series of rug pulls and other scandals, cooling interest in the tokens.
The price of SOL has plummeted even as multiple fund issuers have filed applications based on its spot price. The SEC has received proposals from Franklin Templeton Grayscale, Bitwise, Canary, 21Shares, and VanEck.
Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas has penciled in a 70% probability that the SEC will approve the ETFs.
Bitcoin, other coins plunge
The Solana network’s native token dropped amid a broader slump in the digital assets market, with Bitcoin dipping to nearly $86,000 at one point Tuesday, well below its all-time high above $108,000.
Ethereum, Dogecoin and XRP had all fallen sharply as of this morning, as investors spooked by a potential trade war stemming from U.S. tariffs, rising inflation and global political unrest, have retreated from crypto and other risk-on assets. Top coins have broadly started to recover some ground in recent hours, with those assets each down about 5-6% over the past day.
The tech-focused Nasdaq and S&P 500 were down more than 1.45% and 0.5%, respectively, in Tuesday trading. Both are off their multiple highs reached in recent months.
Edited by James Rubin
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