The price of the cryptocurrency Solana, surged over 60% from levels of around $185 on January 13 to over $290 on January 19, before entering a phase of significant volatility over the last 24 hours as it first fell to almost $230 before jumping to above $260. Notably, SOL is up 40% in a week.
The large recent move can be attributed to a meme coin launched by President Donald Trump on Solana’s blockchain. The meme coin – Official Trump – is now the largest meme coin on the Solana network with a market capitalization of $10 billion. In fact, the recent rally has made SOL the world’s fifth-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $130 billion.
Cryptocurrencies have rallied since Trump won the U.S. presidential elections, as hopes that the new administration will take a friendly approach toward digital currencies sparked unprecedented interest in them. After all, in one of his rallies, Trump said he would make the U.S. the “crypto capital” of the world. This has led to the most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, crossing the $100,000 mark for the first time ever — more than doubling from the level of $44,000 at the beginning of the year. Ripple’s coin XRP has seen one of the strongest rallies among the larger coins. Our take on What’s The Next Trigger For XRP Price? has more details.
Now, the $TRUMP coin has gained over 700% since its launch on Friday. First Lady Melania Trump also launched the $MELANIA meme coin on the Solana platform, and it has now a market capitalization of over $1 billion. It should be noted that the Trump meme coin was created to demonstrate support for and connection with the values and symbolism associated with “$TRUMP” and related artwork. The official webpage of the meme coin has a disclaimer stating that the meme coin’s purpose is not to serve as any form of investment product or security. $TRUMP is non-political and has no affiliation with political campaigns, offices, or government organizations.
The token distribution for $TRUMP breaks down as follows: of the initial 200 million coins (which will expand to one billion within three years), the public can access 10%, another 10% is reserved for liquidity, and the remaining 80% is allocated to content creators and CIC Digital, which is connected to The Trump Organization.
Coming back to Solana, it is a blockchain platform and cryptocurrency enabling rapid, low-cost transactions and the development of decentralized applications. Other than $TRUMP, some of the coins on its platform include Raydium, Jupiter, and another meme coin, Bonk.
President Trump will be sworn in as the 47th president of the U.S. later today, and he has picked a crypto-friendly face – Paul Atkins – to lead the SEC. Furthermore, David Sacks – a venture capital firm co-founder – will be the AI & Crypto Czar. This is being seen as favorable for cryptocurrencies at large.
Overall, SOL has had a great past week, and this breakout could well be just the beginning of a much larger rally. A key driver of growth for SOL is likely to be the possible launch of its ETF. Bitwise, VanEck, 21Shares, and Canary are some of the asset managers awaiting ETF approval for SOL with a decision expected later this week. While a Solana ETF may attract less investment than Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, its approval would still benefit SOL by enhancing its market credibility, enabling institutional investment, and providing easier access for retail investors. Furthermore, the recent $TRUMP coin on Solana’s network and a potential ETF approval may increase its market adoption, with more developers building on the platform.
Although SOL has seen a solid 40% rise in a week, looking at a slightly longer timeframe, the increase in SOL over the recent years has been far from consistent. The returns for the coin were, 11,171% in 2021, -94% in 2022, 976% in 2023, and 78% in 2024, considerably more volatile than the S&P 500.
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