Bitcoin may have broken $80,000, but Solana is stealing the spotlight. SOL, the blockchain’s native token, climbed more than 23% over the past week, with much of that gain coming in the past 24 hours. The token recently crossed $100 for the first time since February and now trades at $107, according to crypto analytics platform CoinGecko.
Solana’s price surge coincided with record-breaking trading volume in Solana exchange-traded funds. On Tuesday, Solana reported that its ETF cumulative inflows hit a record $1.2 billion, with nearly $34 million coming in on Monday alone. It marked the biggest single day so far this year, capping five straight days of inflows.
The total stablecoin value on Solana approached $16 billion on Thursday, according to data aggregator DefiLlama, giving investors more readily available dollar-backed liquidity on the network.
These gains have come during a more favorable stretch for crypto markets. Last week, the Treasury Department announced a series of bond buybacks, which investors interpreted as a sign that more cash could circulate through financial markets. The rebound marked a sharp reversal from the crypto downturn that began last October. When investors anticipate more liquidity, they tend to take on more risk by investing in speculative assets like crypto.
Bitcoin rose first and lifted the broader market, but Solana has outperformed many other altcoins, a catchall term for tokens other than Bitcoin.
“$SOL is moving upwards here, but as you can see, the bear market lasted for a year and we’ve not even gained 20% of that back. Great period upon us,” wrote crypto analyst Michael van de Poppe.
Alongside its price, Solana has benefited from signs of growing network activity. Bitcoin’s appeal rests largely on its fixed supply and store-of-value narrative, while Solana’s case depends more on its ability to support fast, low-cost trading and other decentralized finance applications. According to DefiLlama, Solana’s decentralized exchanges handled nearly $56 billion in trades over the past 30 days and have processed more than $10 billion so far this week.
Some of that activity came from memecoin trading, which has increased sharply in recent weeks. Solana’s low transaction costs and Pump.fun, a popular token-launch platform, have made it a popular venue for traders to quickly buy and sell such highly speculative tokens. But the volume can disappear as fast as it arrives and does not necessarily signal lasting demand.
Still, the numbers do not show that investors are broadly abandoning Bitcoin for Solana. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs drew more than $232 million in net inflows on Thursday and recorded daily trading volume of $8 billion, according to crypto analytics platform CoinGlass.