Solana (SOL) is the second-best performing cryptocurrency in the top 100 by market capitalization on Thursday, having gained an impressive more than 7% on the session to hit its highest level since July above $25.
The cryptocurrency’s latest pump, which has seen it rally over 45% from its September lows under $17.50, has seen it reclaim a market cap of more than $10 billion.
In the process, SOL, the cryptocurrency that powers the high-performance smart-contract-enabled layer-1 Solana blockchain, has overtaken the market caps of rivals Dogecoin (DOGE) and Cardano (ADA) to rank as the seventh largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
The cryptocurrency collapsed to as low as $8 per token, marking a more than 95% pullback from its all-time high price around $260 back in 2021 at the time following the collapse of ill-fated crypto exchange FTX.
Ex-FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried had been a major advocate for Solana, and his now failed hedge fund Alameda had been a major liquidity provider within Solana’s Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ecosystem, hence the spectacular loss of confidence in the cryptocurrency following FTX’s demise.
But Solana has made a miraculous comeback in 2023.
Not only is its price (last just above $25) up over 200% from last year’s lows, but its ecosystem has seen an impressive rebound in liquidity this year.
As per DeFi Llama, the total value of crypto locked in Solana-based smart contracts remains in an uptrend and, at $1.1 billion, has more than doubled since the start of the year.
Price Prediction – Where Next for Solana (SOL)?
The latest bounce in Solana likely has more to do with optimism about upcoming spot Bitcoin ETFs than is does to do with any Solana-specific catalysts.
With Solana’s 2023 uptrend still strongly intact, if the cryptocurrency can break above resistance in the $24-25 area on a sustained basis, the door should be open for a fast run higher towards a yearly high above $32.
That could mean quick and easy gains in the region of 27%.
Time to Buy SOL?
Solana’s strong bounce from its 200DMA earlier this month suggest it’s the bulls strongly retain an upper hand.
And amid lots of reasons to be optimistic about Solana’s long-term adoption prospects, analysts are getting more bullish on the cryptocurrency.
In a recent video by anonymous YouTube channel InvestAnswers, the host told his 447,000 viewers that he “sees a number of different tailwinds for Solana”, before listing Solana Pay, which was recently integrated into Shopify and the newly launched Solana phone called Saga and its associated decentralized app store.
InvestAnswers also noted Solana’s cost efficiency, scalability, great tokenomics and its recent Visa partnership as other reasons why it is positioned to perform well in the coming years.
For these reasons, popular crypto analyst and trader DCA Crypto predicted in a video released on Thursday that Solana (SOL) will break its all-time highs at $250-260 and potentially even get as high as $400 in the upcoming bull market.
That would mark gains of as much as 16x versus Solana’s current price at just over $25.
If DCA Crypto is correct, now would be a great time to buy SOL.
DCA Crypto noted that he plans to take a substantial amount of profit ahead of the $250-400 zone being hit, however, to ensure that he is in profit.
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