Solana Hits Yearly Low as ‘Perfect Storm’ Batters Price

Solana’s price fell to its lowest point in over a year on Monday, dropping to $118 as meme coin traders on Pump.Fun showed fresh signs of heightened fatigue.

The platform that lets anyone launch a meme coin on Solana became a breeding ground for tokens last year. Yet Pump.Fun’s activity has cooled off since Argentina’s President, Javier Milei, endorsed a Solana-based meme coin called LIBRA last month.

While Pump.Fun’s daily fees hit an all-time high of $15.5 million in January, that figure had fallen 99% to $117,000 on Sunday, according to a Dune dashboard. Daily active addresses on Pump.Fun meanwhile halved to around 146,000 from 290,000.

Pump.Fun has generated nearly $585 million in cumulative revenue since it launched last January, but prediction market users on Myriad Markets currently doubt that figure will exceed $615 million by the end of this month (Disclosure: Myriad Markets is owned by Decrypt’s parent company, DASTAN.)

Solana’s price has been rattled by a “perfect storm” of bad news, according to Matthew Nay, a research analyst at Messari. He told Decrypt on Monday that controversy surrounding meme coins has weighed on Solana’s price alongside fears of newly unlocked tokens. 

When FTX collapsed in 2022, the exchange’s bankruptcy estate was left with millions of locked Solana tokens. While much of those holdings were auctioned off, the bankruptcy estate saw 11.16 million Solana unlocked earlier this month, according to Messari data.

The development freed up around $1.3 billion worth of Solana, and Nay said that has created a negative sentiment as President Donald Trump’s trade war continues battering broader markets.

“In my opinion, we’re a little oversold,” he said, adding that the FTX estate’s unlock schedule was “actually already priced in to a certain extent” because it’s been known for so long.

Meme coins have been one of Solana’s biggest draws over the past year, but excitement surrounding the cryptocurrency has stemmed from applications for exchange-traded funds with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Among cryptocurrencies that asset managers are jockeying to offer products for, experts say Solana’s chances of a green light are strong. However, Nay said that a spot Solana ETF appears to be on the back-burner compared to the agency’s other priorities.

“I think there’s a couple things on their priority list that are ahead of the Solana ETF,” Nay said, pointing to a market structure bill being weighed by lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Based on what he’s seen so far, Nay predicted that the SEC will approve a spot Solana ETF in the second half of this year. Meanwhile, interest in Solana may cool, but Nay said Solana will capture the bulk of activity when it rebounds.

“Solana had a meme coin summer, and we saw all the tokens that launched around [Pump.Fun] generating incredible revenue numbers,” he said. “I think that’ll always be there within crypto.”

Edited by James Rubin