Solana’s impressive price rise has seen it briefly overtake Binance’s BNB after its market capitalization neared $42 billion amid a sharp price rise of over 80% over the e past 30 days and over 840% so far this year.
Solana’s price is currently at $94 after moving more than 23% over the last week, while BNB is trading at $268.5 after moving up around 5.6% over the last week and around 8.7% year-to-date. As a result, SOL’s market capitalization is now at $40.11 billion, while BNB’s market cap is at $40.7 billion after a brief correction.
The rise has meant that for a brief period Solana flipped BNB to become the fourth-largest digital asset by market capitalization, behind Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether’s USDT.
Solana’s price has been recovering from the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, whose founder Sam Bankman-Fried was a staunch supporter of, leading the token and its ecosystem to be affected by association. Bankman-Fried was recently found guilty on counts of wire fraud and money laundering.
Solana’s ecosystem has been seeing growing adoption, with its Saga smartphone, which once faced sluggish sales, selling out recently over a lucrative 30 million BONK token airdrop for each new owner of the phone.
At its high, the airdrop was estimated to be worth more than the smartphone’s $599 price tag, meaning users could get their hands on a new smartphone and still make a profit off of just the airdrop.
Analysts believe SOL’s price may keep on rising, however, with a popular cryptocurrency strategist who has gained a large following on social media after accurately calling Bitcoin’s 2018 bear market bottom above $3,000 predicting a major surge for it in the near future.
Meanwhile BNB’s price has been affected by Binance’s struggles with U.S. regulators that led to the leading cryptocurrency exchange agreeing to settle with them for a whopping $4.3 billion.
Featured image via Unsplash.
