Solana joins the exclusive $100 billion club

Solana (SOL) has joined the exclusive group of cryptocurrencies with more than $100 billion in market cap. The altcoin achieved the milestone earlier today after an almost 8% increase in its value, according to CoinMarketCap.

With its gains today, SOL reached $212.66, its highest price since November 2021. SOL performance continues a rally that has seen the token gain more than  30% in seven days as the crypto market records a rally influenced mostly by Donald Trump’s victory and the Federal Reserve rate cut.

The 34% gains for Solana make it one of the best-performing major cap tokens over the past week, surpassing Bitcoin, which is only up 18.5%, and Ethereum, which has gained 33%. However, memecoins, including Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, have been better performers, with 93% and 67.5%, respectively.

With Solana now having more than $100 billion in market cap, it joins three other crypto assets, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether USDT stablecoins, as the only crypto tokens at the level. However, the Binance BNB token will likely join the exclusive group next. The token has been up 15% in the past seven days, and its market cap is now at $91.79 billion.

Solana is still waiting to beat ATH as whales accumulate

Despite its recent performance, SOL is yet to beat the all-time high it reached in November 2021 at $260. Still, the token has experienced a significant turnaround in its fortunes, enough to make its performance impressive

After falling as low as $8 following the collapse of the FTX exchange and Alameda Research, the smart contract has gradually built its way back up to become one of the leading Layer-1 blockchains. Most of its resurgence is due to the DeFi activity thanks to memecoin trading. At the center of the memecoin craze is token deployer Pump.fun, which has generated over $100 million in revenue.

With its current pace, many people believe it is only a matter of time before it reaches that level. Crypto analyst Bob Loukas said as far back as November 6 that SOL has been the best-performing crypto of this cycle with how it managed to stay stable while others were in free fall. He also predicted that it could reach an all-time high in 14 days.

He said:

“34 week consolidation for SOL best performing crypto of cycle (that stayed strong while most shat). SOL to ATH within 14 days wouldn’t be surprise now.  This one could get silly in 2025.”

Meanwhile, others believe the Solana breakout has kickstarted an explosive phase in the crypto bull market. Head of Macro Research at Global Macro Investor (GMI) Julien Bittel believes that Solana crossing $185 is one of the signals for confirming the Banana Zone in Q4. The banana zone describes a period when the price of crypto assets accelerates upward, with the chart forming a   Banana shape.

With high expectations about Solana, whales have been busy accumulating the altcoin. According to Lookonchain, a whale named “AA21…VxH9” has bought 257,599 SOL ($54 million) since October 22 and another 7,500 SOL  ($1.57 million) today.

Can Solana flip Ethereum?

With Solana enjoying a more than impressive performance that has seen it gain 96% year to date, speculations about the network flipping Ethereum have dominated the Crypto Twitter discussions. However, that looks unlikely to happen anytime soon, given that ETH has more than three times the market cap of Solana, at $389 billion.

While it is still far from flipping Ethereum in market cap, Solana already dominates all blockchain networks in transaction activity, with 10 billion transactions this year. The closest network to it is NEAR, with 1.99 billion transactions, while Ethereum had only 361 million transactions in 2024.

Meanwhile, part of what is fueling SOL’s performance is that it could also get an exchange-traded fund (ETF) listed in the next few years. With Trump as president and crypto market deregulation expected, many believe SOL might be the next crypto to get an ETF, joining Bitcoin and Ethereum. Two asset managers have already filed for a Solana ETF.