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Is Solana Crashing Below $100? Token Unlocks Fuel Fresh Sell-Off Concerns

March 1 saw the FTX estate release more than 9 million SOL into the market, although recipients may not necessarily sell their coins at once.

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Simon Chandler

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Simon Chandler

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Simon Chandler is a Brighton-based writer and journalist with over ten years of experience writing about crypto, technology, politics and culture. He has written for Cryptonews.com since late 2017,...

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March 10, 2025

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Is Solana Crashing Below $100? Token Unlocks Fuel Fresh Sell-Off Concerns.

Solana has tumbled to $124 today, marking a 3% loss as the cryptocurrency market as a whole declines by 4% in the past 24 hours.

SOL is now down by 9% in a week and by 38% in the past month, with the alt – the sixth-biggest coin in the market – also down by 16% in a year.

The past few weeks have been particularly difficult for Solana, which has not only witnessed a Trump-induced decline in meme token interest, but has also seen a massive unlock of tokens via the FTX estate.

Such factors have suppressed demand for SOL, and when combined with difficult market and macroeconomic conditions, it may be several weeks before the coin enjoys a sustained rally.

Is Solana Crashing Below $100? Token Unlocks Fuel Fresh Sell-Off Concerns

Some observers have been talking down Solana since last year, given its busy unlock schedule for 2025, when around 18 million SOL – currently worth about $2.23 billion – will enter the market.

Of course, FTX’s recent and upcoming unlocks don’t necessarily mean that the recipients of its SOL – mostly big asset managers such as Galaxy Digital and Pantera Capital – will sell immediately.

But it does raise concerns surrounding the stability of Solana’s price, especially when the wider market has been on a downwards trajectory since the end of January.

In fact, Solana is down by 57% since January 19, which is a massive decline for such a major token, with Bitcoin down by ‘only’ 25% since peaking on January 20.

As noted above, much of the problem lies with a growing distaste for meme coins, which have increasingly been centered around Solana and its ecosystem in the past year or so.

Indeed, Pump.fun’s volume declined by more than 60% in February (and the trend is continuing so far this month), with investor demand for meme coins shaken by Official Trump (TRUMP) and by the (briefly) Javier Milei-endorsed LIBRA.

As such, Solana is arguably waiting to reinvent itself as a legitimately useful layer-one network, with its attraction in this respect undercut by the recent rise of Sonic.

It has the full rollout of the long-awaited Firedancer validator client to look forward to, which will improve efficiency and stability.

Solana price chart. — Source: TradingView

And if the market in general recovers by the time Firedancer arrives, the Solana price could return $200 by H2.

Its chart suggests that it’s close to bottoming out, so if the ongoing tariff situation calms down in the coming weeks, it could recover strongly soon enough.

New High-Potential Altcoins Could Bring Strong Rallies

Because Solana has struggled in recent weeks, many traders may prefer to turn to alternatives right now, including lower-cap tokens that can often outperform the market.

Presale tokens in particular have done very well this year, especially if they’ve been able to raise significant sums and generate enough momentum.

One example that has done just this is Solaxy (SOLX), which has raised over $25.8 million as it prepares to launch Solana’s first-ever layer-two network.

Due to launch in the next few weeks, Solaxy will help Solana users and traders avoid failed transactions, outages and congestion, which have been a big problem for the layer-one blockchain in recent years.

The SOLX token will be used to pay transaction fees, meaning that as Solaxy adoption grows, demand for SOLX could skyrocket.

It will also enable instant bridging between itself and Solana, while compatibility with other chains (such as Ethereum) will be added after its launch.