New Year, New Solana: Battered SOL Beats Top 50 Crypto By Far

Other top coins so far in the new year include OKB, exchange OKX’s utility coin, which was up 13% as of Tuesday morning, and Flow blockchain’s native FLOW coin

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As crypto investors start to parse out their trading strategies for 2023 and attempt to recuperate losses from last year, Solana is emerging as an early winner. 

Solana’s native token SOL, one of the so-called “Sam Coins” backed by now disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, is already up more than 20% in 2023, as of data pulled at 10 am ET. The token ended last year 94% lower against the dollar. 

While only less than three days in, Solana has positioned itself as the best performing top-50 token of 2023 so far. As of Tuesday at 10 am ET, SOL was trading over $13, according to data

Toward the end of 2022, SOL hit single digits for the first time in two years, dropping below 10% and shedding 75% since FTX’s collapse. 

Bankman-Fried was a main backer of the smart contracts-focused protocol Solana. FTX had purchased more than 58 million SOL tokens from the Solana Foundation and Solana Labs starting in August 2020, according to the now-bankrupt exchange. 

FTX-affiliated Alameda Research reportedly held about $1.2 billion in SOL tokens ahead of the crippling bank run on FTX, which led to its bankruptcy.

Other top coins so far include OKB, exchange OKX’s utility coin, which was up 13% as of Tuesday morning, and Flow blockchain’s native FLOW coin, which had rallied similarly over the previous three days. 

Even with some promising early numbers, traders keen to bounce back after a year of losses should keep an eye on global macroeconomic data, which have proven to influence token prices, analysts warn. 

“While the crypto industry has plenty of things to worry about right now, investors should pay close attention to changes in interest rates over the coming months,” research analysts from Kaiko wrote in a note Tuesday. “Macro could very well be the single biggest market catalyst in 2023.” 

Leading the pack for the worst performing top-50 coins are LEO, Bitfinex’s utility token, which has lost more than 3% in 2023, and BitTorrent’s BTT, which is down about 1.6%.


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With the recent election, it’s clear that there will be a meaningful shift in crypto regulations and legislation. Trump is likely as pro-crypto as a president can be. He launched (multiple) of his own NFT collections and is launching an Aave wrapper called World Liberty Fi. He has also spoken out and mentioned that he wants to make the United States "the crypto capital of the planet" and transform it into the "Bitcoin superpower of the world". He proposed creating a strategic national Bitcoin stockpile alongside support from Senator Cynthia Lummis, promising to retain 100% of all Bitcoin held by the U.S. government. More importantly, we’re likely to see deregulation across the board in a lot of industries, with crypto being one of them - as Trump has committed to keeping the crypto market largely unregulated. Crypto, DeFi in particular, has historically been knee-capped by overreaching and hostile governmental agencies and regulation by enforcement, as evidenced by the plethora of Wells notices and lawsuits over the past few years. With Donald Trump winning the presidency, Republicans taking control of the Senate, and being on the verge of securing the House, we think it’s likely that crypto realizes positive regulatory clarity. Below, you can find our analysts’ takes:

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