Solana’s SOL Jumps 20% as Investors Turn Bullish, Fears of FTX Sales Wane

Solana’s SOL jumped nearly 20% in 24 hours to lead the charge among crypto majors in an otherwise range-bound market.

SOL crossed $63, reaching a level previously seen in May 2022. Daily trading volumes also spiked to over $3.5 billion, up more than 70% from average levels of $2 billion at the start of November.

While there was no immediate catalyst for Wednesday’s bump, optimism around Solana has recently bumped after the end of Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial. Bankman-Fried was a prominent backer of Solana and acquired over $1 billion worth of the tokens through his companies Alameda Research and FTX.

SOL prices took a drastic hit in November 2022 after a CoinDesk report first drew light to possible cracks in Bankman-Fried’s empire, but sentiment has recovered since the once-crypto titan was jailed and pronounced guilty on seven charges. Meanwhile, wallets linked to the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, controlled by the debtors group, have an estimated $102 million in SOL tokens to crypto exchanges in the past few months. Moving to exchanges may likely indicate a sale of those tokens on the open market, however, SOL prices have continued to grow.

Some market watchers have hypothesized that the FTX estate may soon run out of SOL, citing data from the on-chain analytics tool SponOnChain.

Data suggests institutional investments into SOL tokens may have picked up in the past weeks. Last week, shares of the Grayscale Solana Trust (GSOL) hit a premium of nearly 900% to the spot SOL held in each share – indicative of rampant demand for the token among regulated funds.

Elsewhere, ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood said in a CNBC interview on Tuesday that Solana was possibly a better bet than Ethereum, the world’s most used blockchain, in terms of technical capabilities.

"Ether was faster and cheaper than bitcoin," Wood said. "Solana is even faster and cost-effective than Ether."