SOL crosses $220, eyes fresh all-time high

Traders will be looking toward $260, roughly the all-time high the asset set in November 2021

article-image

ddRender/Shutterstock and Adobe modified by Blockworks

share


This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.


Soak it all in, SOL holders. 

Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election ignited a crypto market rally. SOL reached a nearly three-year high Monday morning, crossing the $220 mark for the first time since early December 2021. The asset’s market capitalization also set a new record, crossing $104 billion for the first time, according to CoinGecko data. 

Solana’s chief rival ETH has been an even bigger beneficiary of the election pump, rising some 26% since Trump declared victory in the wee hours of the morning on Wednesday, compared to an 18% jump for SOL. Bitcoin is up 13% in that span.

For the last several months, sources cited the election outcome repeatedly as a potential catalyst for SOL. The crypto industry has operated largely in a legal gray area in the US under the oversight of SEC Chair Gary Gensler, and Trump courted crypto voters and donors with the promise of a more friendly regulatory regime. 

Solana, which has spent 2024 trying to establish itself as part of a “big three” in crypto assets next to bitcoin and ether, arguably had the most at stake in the election out of any of them. In approving spot bitcoin and ether ETFs for trading this year, the SEC acknowledged both assets as commodities, meaning they can be bought and sold without running afoul of stricter securities trading laws. SOL, on the other hand, is one of a handful of assets the SEC currently paints as securities in its ongoing lawsuit against Coinbase

Being formally declared a crypto asset security by the SEC could present an existential risk for SOL, because the agency has been loath to let US firms register as broker-dealers who could facilitate crypto securities trading. In other words, SOL (and the several other alleged securities tokens) could have been functionally cut off from trading in the US, where some 60% of the world’s equity markets live.

M^0 chief growth officer Jacob Laufer cited SOL’s lingering securities law status getting resolved alongside the approval of pending spot SOL ETFs as sources of optimism surrounding Solana.

With friendlier regulators, SOL could be “poised” to capture institutional interest alongside the retail interest it has already drawn, Laufer said. Solana continues to be the top venue for memecoin trading, with the launchpad pump.fun topping $1 million in daily trading fees every day since Oct. 13. 

With SOL now sitting at around $220, traders will be looking toward $260, roughly the all-time high the asset set in November 2021. In comments to The Block this weekend, an analyst from Standard Chartered called a fresh SOL peak by the year’s end “inevitable.”


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Unlocked by Template (7).png

Research

Union’s improvements upon Tendermint consensus through CometBLS, coupled with ZK proving through Galois, allow for a broadly scalable, cost efficient, and low latency IBC implementation that is feasibly scalable across every existing blockchain, virtual machine and runtime. The implementation offers modular crosschain interoperability without the need for trusted intermediaries.  

article-image

Kraken’s chief security officer Nick Percoco said the exchange turned the tables on a North Korean hacker

article-image

Or is it approximately the least cypherpunk thing we could do?

article-image

Over 20% of SOL-USD swap volume goes through SolFi

article-image

CEO Vlad Tenev calls expected clarity on listing crypto asset securities “a big opportunity”

article-image

Big Tech pulled US indexes back into the green Thursday, as investors waited for two more Mag 7 first-quarter reports after the bell

article-image

Charts and takeaways from Tuesday’s jobs report and Wednesday’s GDP print, as the economy digests the tariff war