Solana (SOL) Price Tanks Under $10, Will It Survive Going Into 2023?

Popular as the Ethereum-killer once, blockchain platform Solana is having a pretty tough time this year in 2022. In addition to facing the crypto winter of 2022, SOL, the native crypto of Solana has been under a free fall after the collapse of crypto exchange FTX.

Currently, the SOL price has tanked under $10 for the first time since March 2021. Over the last year, the SOL price has dropped more than 96% raising doubts over whether Solana could actually survive going into 2023.

Solana’s native cryptocurrency SOL has been one of the worst-hit crypto tokens since the implosion of crypto exchange FTX and its price has corrected by more than 70% just over the last eight weeks.

FTX’s sister concern Alameda Research has made a huge investment in Solana and was holding SOL as one of the reserve currencies. However, as trading platform Alameda started facing liquidity crisis it started selling SOL in huge quantities in open market in order to protect FTX’s native token FTT from falling further.

As a result, the SOL price started spiraling down with large number of sellers dumping the crypto. Since then, Solana has found its further difficult to come out of this situation and the downtrend continues.

During an interview earlier this month, Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana Labs Inc. said that he wouldn’t focus much on the SOL price instead his focus should be on “the technology and having people build something awesome that’s decentralized.” 

Yokavenko has been one of the close friends with disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and has also appeared with him in several fireside chats and conferences. During a joint conversation with Solana co-founder Raj Gokal, Yakovenko said: “I’m still trying to square what I perceive him to be and like what actually happened. It just feels really, really jarring.” 

Additionally, Yokavenko stated that only 4% of the projects build on Solana have been actively affected by the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. Also, nearly 80% of the teams on Solan had no exposure to crypto exchange FTX. “There’s definitely more to Solana than FTX,” Yakovenko said.

Also, FTX’s and Alameda’s venture arm had invested in several projects that were operating on the Solana blockchain. Furthermore, FTX also build Solana to build its native decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Serum. Last year, FTX US launched its NFT marketplace on Solana. All of these is no longer operational.

The Solana Foundation stated that they have $1 million of cash equivalent on FTX.com at the time of their bankruptcy filing.