Benzinga - Solana (SOL) saw gains during the 2021 bull market. The price went from under $2 to over $260 in less than a year. While many attribute the gain to the overall bull market, others point toward Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) and his involvement and advocacy for the project.SBF was closely involved with Solana. He created Serum, a decentralized exchange, on the blockchain and invested in several other projects on Solana. FTX and Alameda Research also had large positions in SOL. This incentivized them to prop up the price of SOL through projects and proprietary trading. They amassed nearly 60 million SOL tokens — over 10% of the supply. The Solana Foundation also stored a sizable amount of assets on FTX's platform.Don't Miss:
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It all came tumbling down in early November 2022 when FTX became insolvent and was forced to file for bankruptcy. This sent shock waves through the crypto universe and resulted in huge losses for almost everyone involved. However, SOL was hit harder than most other tokens. This is because of SBF's involvement in the project and FTX's large SOL position. SOL lost 50% of its value within 2 months and was worth less than $10 by the end of 2023. This resulted in a price decrease of over 96%. These losses were much more than other large tokens, such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). These tokens each lost around 75% of their value. As the dust from the FTX scandal began to settle, some saw a clear investment opportunity in SOL. They believed the token had been oversold and presented a great buying opportunity, an investment thesis was largely correct. Trending: Don't buy the top this time around. Reboot your crypto portfolio today.Solana performed well in 2023. Experts point to a few main factors driving the price increases. First, a wave of new projects have landed on the Solana network. Most notable are Jito (JTO) and Bonk (BONK). Jito recently had an airdrop for its staking platform, and Bonk is a popular meme coin on the chain. Additionally, with spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) becoming a possibility, many are bullish on the overall crypto market and have hopes for spot ETFs for other tokens.All in all, Solana had a fantastic year, outperforming the overall crypto market and most other investments. If you had bought Solana right after the FTX crash at the bottom price of less than $10, you would have made a sizable return on investment. The token hit a new 52-week high of over $125 on Christmas Day. If you had invested $1,000 in Solana when it was worth $10 per token, that investment would be worth $12,500. Read Next:
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