How Solana Meme Coins and DeFi Pushed SOL Above $200

Solana, the fourth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has exceeded $200 for the first time since April. This comes after Donald Trump won the U.S. Presidential election setting off green candles throughout crypto markets and prompting the SOL trenches to go into overdrive.

Solana (SOL) has climbed 7.5% on the day and 21.1% over the past week, according to CoinGecko, to a market capitalization of $95 billion. Early on Friday morning, the token peaked at a price of $202.55, the highest it’s been since April 1, 2024. 

This previous high was reached before the network’s killer app, Pump.fun, caused meme coin mania to start. Back in April Pump.fun, the most popular token launchpad in crypto, was responsible for just 10,000 tokens a day. Since then, the meme coin factory has hosted a slew of celebrity tokens, outrageous livestreams, as well as an innovative “AI-conceived” multi-million dollar coin.

Now Solana has reached its April high, the Pump.fun trenches are also showing signs of good health. On Thursday alone, 32,000 tokens were launched, according to Dune dashboard data. And just this week the protocol passed 3 million total coins deployed over its lifetime.

This meme coin frenzy was largely motivated by the U.S. Presidential election and continued by believed pro-crypto candidate Trump winning. It became a running joke among meme coin traders that they get their election news from the launchpad’s dashboard and that a Trump win would be great for everyone’s portfolios.

During his campaign Trump embraced crypto with open arms, winning over much of the industry. This included promising to end the “unlawful and un-American crypto crackdown,” to create friendlier regulation, and prompt the government to stockpile Bitcoin. These crypto-related pitches are why the whole industry is seeing a boom following his victory.

With this, optimism for a Solana ETF has grown. Business Head at CoinSwitch, Balaji Srihari, told Decrypt on Thursday that we could see the SEC’s stance on Solana soften, potentially opening the door for an ETF.

An ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) is a publicly traded investment vehicle that tracks the value of its underlying asset. At the start of the year both Bitcoin and Ethereum had ETFs approved in the U.S. with billions of dollars flowing through them. For example, iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), the largest Bitcoin ETF, has over $17 billion worth of assets under management. 

This type of investment vehicle opens the door for traditional investors, those who have typically veered away from cryptocurrency due to its speculative nature and high barrier for entry. A Solana ETF would promote the injection of potentially billions of dollars from this kind of every-day investor.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.