Solana Soars Close to Record: What Could Drive Prices in 2025?

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Crypto markets are betting big on Solana — the Ethereum rival pressed higher even as the broader digital-asset market pulled back last week. Now Solana needs a few stars to align so it could rocket to a fresh all-time high, surpassing its 2021 record of $260. And by the common consensus, record territory could be a few sessions away while a fuller, hulking dominance could be on the cards for 2025.

Solana SOLUSD is on a roll. Early on Tuesday, Solana neared its record high of $260 set back in 2021 when crypto bros were going all in on their favorite coins (birthing some meme coins in the process.)

The Solana token, which runs on the layer-1 blockchain of the same name, shot up to $245, staging a monster recovery from $8 a piece back in January 2023 when crypto markets were reeling from the fabulous implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX and its sister company, trading house Alameda Research. (SBF was an early buyer of Solana, scooping it up for as low as 20 cents.)

Now Solana is no longer associated with the fallen crypto mogul who’s serving a 25-year prison sentence. Instead, the digital coin is running free and carving out its own reputation. And fast. Almost as fast as its ability to process transactions on the blockchain.

Solana is touted as a faster and cheaper alternative to Ethereum ETHUSD, the second-largest coin with a valuation of $375 billion. That’s some $260 billion more than Solana’s own market cap of about $115 billion.

Still, Solana’s gains outshine these of Ethereum:

Solana year-to-date gains: 142%
Ethereum year-to-date gains: 40%
Bitcoin year-to-date gains: 107%

Solana’s performance hinges on three very different sets of circumstances:

1. Its ability to handle the technical workload as a payment processor
   
2. Its infrastructure capacity for building up various projects
   
3. Its appeal as an investment asset (or why you’re here)
   

On the first one — payment processor — Solana boasts lightning-fast transactions to the tune of 50,000 per second. Ethereum? That’s about 15 to 45 transactions per second. Visa? A wide range between 1,500 and 65,000 (depends who you’re asking.) And Bitcoin gets you about 2 to 7 transactions per second (but no one really cares about this.)

With breakneck speed, Solana is shaping up as a worthy opponent to traditional payment processors, flexing high volumes in a decentralized environment.

On the second one — building grounds for projects — Solana is considered the go-to place to launch meme tokens based on dogs, cats and even politicians and business people. It has been handling these pretty well, considering the massive influx of dog-themed and Elon Musk-themed tokens.

On the third one — investing and trading — Solana is staring into exciting prospects for 2025. The cryptocurrency might get its own US spot exchange-traded fund soon and traders are buzzing from excitement. A Solana-based spot ETF could be a reality as soon as 2025 (most likely after Securities and Exchange Commission boss Gary Gensler gets fired.) Only two other cryptocurrencies have been granted permission to strut down the traditional ETF pathway — eleven Bitcoin ETFs and nine Ethereum ETFs.

Now that Donald Trump has secured another four years in the White House, the crypto industry expects big things to come its way.

The President-elect has embraced digital assets and even announced his own crypto gig — a Bitcoin strategic reserve. Which was shortly after complemented by the cost-cutting DOGE department led by Elon Musk.

All in all, Washington is expected to be super friendly to crypto, especially after large industry players such as Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase spent $135 million backing more than 50 Congress candidates, most of them winning seats.

Where do you think Solana is heading next? Do you see lots of bullish momentum going into 2025? Or maybe you’re more inclined to believe it’ll come crashing down? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!