Solana on Bazooka, hit all time high

Solana finally broke its all-time high price record, surpassing $262 for the first time in three years.

Solana continued its recent hot streak following cryptocurrency candidate Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. election, breaking above the previous $260 record mark early Thursday afternoon, according to Binance data. The surge followed after  Gary Gensler, the SEC Chairman who led the regulator’s crypto industry crackdown, resigned on January 20, 2025, as Trump took office.

The altcoin gained significant traction as a quicker and less expensive alternative to Ethereum, and it soared to its previous high price peak in 2021. However, the following year saw a slow cooling of the hype due to a wider bear market in cryptocurrencies as well as technical problems, such as network outages. But in the two years since then, Solana has advanced, with developers working to increase stability and believers continuing to build on the chain. Additionally, Solana Labs has extended its efforts into mobile phone hardware and apps.

Glassnode data revealed that on November 16th, Solana’s transfer volume reached a record-breaking $318 billion, while active addresses surged to more than 22 million.  however, the mean and median transaction volumes decreased at the same time periodicity. The increase in network activity could be a sign of bot-driven activity, which has previously fueled comparable patterns on Solana.

High interest in Solana-based Meme Coins

Meme coin speculation has been the main driver of Solana’s popularity and demand for SOL this cycle because of the network’s ease of minting and low cost. According to DefiLlama, decentralized finance (DeFi) on Solana has increased by more than 500 percent in terms of the total value locked this year to $8.8 billion.

Solana prices on Binance had reached $264 at the time of this publication.  SOL has been among the better-performing altcoins this year with a 160 percent gain since the start of 2024, The asset dropped to a cycle low of just under $10 in December 2022 following the collapse of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency empire.

The idea that Donald Trump will create a more benevolent regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies has sparked the market in recent weeks, the total market capitalization reached an all-time high of $3.4 trillion.

The announcement of SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s resignation in January has also contributed to the rise of altcoins. Gensler frequently claimed during his time there that all cryptocurrency assets other than Bitcoin (BTC) were securities.