Solana (SOL) Price Predictions (2024-2025)
Will Solana continue outperforming Bitcoin & Ethereum during the next bull cycle?
How high will the price of Solana (SOL) reach in 2024? Nobody knows.
There are many catalysts that could cause Solana to reach new ATHs such as: ETF inflows from institutions (BTC & ETH), Trump endorsing crypto, crypto mania & FOMO, network effects, low-cost & fast network, Firedancer upgrades, bullish stock market, etc.
Assuming the crypto market continues booming in 2024-2025 – Solana will likely reach all-time highs… the real question is how far it will shoot beyond its previous ATH.
Solana (SOL) Price Predictions (EOY 2024)
There aren’t many mainstream investors making price predictions for Solana (SOL) in 2024.
Why? More focused on Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) or AI-related plays (NVIDIA, TSM, ASML, AVGO, etc.) – the most dominant assets.
Some people don’t really take Solana (SOL) seriously relative to other cryptos due to lower institutional interest, newness, and retail usage for degen gambling-type investments into memecoins (e.g. WIF, BONK, BOME, BODEN, SLERF, etc.).
Raoul Pal: Up to $750-$1000
Acclaimed macro investor Raoul Pal predicts that Solana (SOL) could hit $750 to $1000 during this crypto bull run.
Pal’s logic has to do with network effects and price charts (SOL-ETH & SOL-BTC). The charts show that Solana continues outperforming both ETH & BTC over the short-term (months) and long-term (multi-years).
Pal is known for being ahead of the mainstream curve for his macro predictions: ETH instead of BTC then SOL instead of ETH (allegedly buying SOL throughout the entire bear market).
Pal is analyzing charts and adoption data – and suggests that the overall data suggest that Solana is a better “trade” than any other crypto (hence him being overweight SOL).
That said, during past bull-runs, Pal has been a bit overzealous with his price predictions (forecasting a price of $20K for ETH by March 2022 when its prior ATH was ~4.8K).
Coin Bureau (Guy): Up to $300+ (short-to-medium term)
Guy from Coin Bureau recently put out an analysis of Solana’s price potential in 2024. (R)
Guy thinks that if Bitcoin’s price remains relatively stable, Solana might see a price rally of 35% to 45% - bringing it close to $300 (possibly over this amount).
Guy noted various catalysts that have led to Solana’s current price – and other things may influence its future price potential.
User growth & adoption: Phantom wallet downloads increased from 2M to 3M in 4 months. There were nearly 1.3M unique wallets on Raydium DEX around March 2024. Magic Eden NFT marketplace has grown significantly (300K+ unique wallets in the past 30 days). This has all translated to significant value gains for SOL.
Memecoin mania: Memecoin mania began with the Bonk token – increasing popularity of Solana’s Saga phone. At one point in March 2024 memecoin presales raised over $100 million in less than 3 days.
Firedancer & other upgrades: Firedancer is an upgrade that will increase network speed and reliability – and is slated to be released by Sep 2024. New token standards with built-in compliance and privacy features arrived in Jan 2024.
SOL vs. BTC: Solana has broken out against Bitcoin on both the weekly and monthly charts. Historically Solana has outperformed Bitcoin since its inception.
Circle & Euro stablecoin: Circle issued its Euro stablecoin natively on Solana.
Historical resilience: Solana is one among many cryptos that not only survived the last “bear market” but experienced explosive growth among users/adoption. After its hack in 2021 for $225 million, Wormhole Bridge raised over $320 million for repairs.
ETF & institutional speculation: Many are speculating about a Solana ETF in the future – potentially sooner than later. Franklin Templeton highlighted Solana’s strengths. Most mainstream institutions believe that SOL is the clear #3 behind BTC and ETH.
Institutions & partnerships: Solana has a partnership with Abu Dhabi for blockchain solutions. Solana also provided a comprehensive set of tools for enterprises to build on the Solana network.
Outages, upgrades, tokens: Solana experienced a 4-hour outage in February 2024 due to a bug (impacted institutional confidence). Temporary suspensions of withdrawals were issued by Binance and Coinbase due to network congestion (from memecoin activity). Token supply increased by 20% within the last 4 months which translates to ~$3 billion in sell pressure at avg. of $150 per SOL).
Ben Armstrong Crypto (BitBoy Crypto): ~$550, ~$2100, ~$4400 (2025)
Many allege that Ben Armstrong (formerly known as “BitBoy Crypto”) is akin to a sleazy used car salesman of crypto tokens (marketing them to his audience and dumping on them after the price pumps).
I don’t follow Armstrong closely, but I do know that he’s one of the only crypto vloggers who continued making content through all the bear markets of old – and he’s one of the only individuals to tell retail to get their bags out of FTX before the collapse… so gotta give some credit here.
Similar to Raoul Pal, Armstrong often gets caught up overhyping crypto projects (last cycle predicting $27K Ethereum) – and many retail investors FOMO into projects (buying high and selling low).
For this cycle, Armstrong believes that Solana will hit $550 (bearish scenario), $2100 (most likely scenario), or $4400 (bullish scenario) by June 2025. I’d say take his top prediction and divide by 6 because he’s always too bullish.
Top-tier crypto: Armstrong believes that Solana is one of the only S-tier (elite) cryptocurrencies today along with XRP. (He rates ETH a “B” and BTC a “C”). This is obviously his own subjective ranking system.
Solana’s recovery (post-SBF): Solana’s past price performance was influenced by SBFs involvement, which drove media attention and market speculation. After the SBF/FTX Ponzi collapse, Solana’s reputation took a massive hit. However, years later and Solana remains strong and continues improving in terms of functionality and adoption.
VanEck prediction: Armstrong points out that VanEck predicts Solana could reach $10.6K in 6 years with a price of $3,211 by 2030. This reflects some strong institutional confidence in Solana’s potential.
Use cases & adoption: Armstrong highlights that Solana’s diverse use cases and adoption keep it a strong contender in the crypto market.
Thoughts? Guy’s prediction seems most balanced and realistic. Raoul’s prediction has an underlying logical thesis/rationale but the actual price upside is probably embellished. Ben’s prediction is mostly subjective speculation based on a combination of prior recovery, historical performance, and VanEck.
Reddit: Solana Price Predictions 2024… (r/Solana)
Most of those in the Solana subreddit (r/Solana) are invested in Solana and are thus not making predictions with any sort of underlying objectivity or logic – just “well I think it’ll go to X.”
So understand that most of these are just pure “guesses” but they can sometimes be entertaining to read. Most were more realistic and measured than I expected.
$250-$300 (“being realistic”)
$240-$510 (“2x to 3x current price”)
$290
$600 minimum (2024) & up to $1200 (2025)
$300 minimum ($250 guaranteed)
$350 (2024) & up to $600 (2025)
$500 (“easy”)
$270-$320
$300 minimum & up to $800 (Trump & rate cuts)
$220-$250 (already 10x since Oct/Nov 2023 – not much more upside)
Factors to consider for Solana price predictions (2024-2025)…
SOL-BTC/SOL-ETH charts: Solana (SOL) is outperforming both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) over the past 6 months, 1-year, and 5-year period. (6 months: +63.87% vs. BTC & +57.13% vs. ETH; 1-year: +208.52% vs. BTC & +287.44% vs. ETH; 5-year: +1645.16% vs. BTC & + 9.26% vs. ETH).
Significant usage: Solana is heavily used. Love it or hate it – people are using it. You may not even like how it is used (swapping SOL for memecoins as a gambling mechanism) – but who cares? Most established cryptos (including ETH) aren’t being widely used by the general public for anything inherently useful.
Ethereum hedge: Although Ethereum has far stronger network effects due to first-mover advantage, a stronger development team, and greater decentralization – Solana is likely the strongest Ethereum competitor at the moment. Developers are moving fast, taking suggestions, embracing chaos (celebs, meme coins, etc.), and using higher-performance hardware. If you have any doubts about the future of Ethereum, Solana is worth considering for investment.
Gambling (degens & memecoins): Solana in 2024 is mostly a gambling type platform with a bunch of memecoins. The expert traders are analyzing charts, contracts, and social sentiment and trying to buy low/sell high. Non-experts are just following trends on social media (e.g. TikTok, X/Twitter, Reddit, etc.) and buying in on Phantom Wallet. Memecoin presales hit over $100M raised in under 3 days in March 2024.
Phantom wallet (ease of use & UI/UX): Over 3M downloads of Phantom wallet browser extension. In March 2024 the Raydium DEX had over 1.3 million unique wallets. Many people prefer using Phantom wallet over MetaMask.
Solana maxis: There is a growing cohort of Solana maximalists. These individuals are typically those who have made significant ROI (%) on Solana investments and/or who use the network frequently – perceiving it as more practical (faster, lower fees, etc.) than Ethereum and other “decentralized smart contract” networks.
Firedancer update: Aims to improve performance, reliability, and scalability of the Solana blockchain. This is an independent validator client built from the ground up by Jump Crypto (will run in parallel with Solana’s existing validator client to make the network more resilient). Has the ability to process over 1M transactions per second per CPU core – making it more attractive to DeFi protocols and high-activity projects. (Anatoly predicts rollout by September 2024).
Increasing network effects: Available on-chain metrics suggest that Solana has recently exploded in: total transactions, active addresses, value moved on chain, total fees, and Jito validator tips. (R) Solana also has been crushing Ethereum in active addresses (40M vs. 15M) and new addresses (26.65M vs. 3.83M) for May 2024 – but remains far behind in TVL (64.52B vs. 4.589B).
Ongoing development: Solana had ~436 full-time developers and ~1,615 part-time developers through December 2023 – putting in #7 overall in the rankings (behind Ethereum, Polygon, Polkadot, Cosmos, Arbitrum, BNB). Total developers don’t necessarily mean that much – as Ethereum had a poorer design from inception so a lot of work to do to make modifications.
High performance hardware (node elitism): Solana is essentially an elitist network from a hardware perspective. It requires that node operators use a high-performance CPU or GPU (e.g. NVIDIA) with at least 128 GB RAM, 1-2+ TB SSD, and high-speed connections (>1 gbps).
Low cost & fast: Solana is known to be significantly cheaper and faster than Ethereum. Fees on Solana are extremely small (e.g. $0.11) and transaction speeds are up to 65,000 TPS thanks to its PoH consensus mechanism. (Ethereum transactions cost $1-$50+ depending on congestion and its transaction speeds range from 15-45 TPS on Layer-1).
DeFi (TVL): Many like using Solana for DeFi / yield farming – as evidenced by ~$4.6B in TVL as of June 2024. Ethereum, Tron, and BSC have more TVL, but Solana keeps growing.
Future ETF (?): A Solana ETF isn’t coming soon due to the fact that there isn’t enough long-term price data. That said, not everyone understands this and some think there may be certain strings pulled to accelerate the process. Even if an ETF isn’t coming soon – one may come in several years – so this is perceived as another bullish future event for Solana.
BTC/ETH headwinds (trickle-down effect): Solana (along with other altcoins) is likely to benefit from a trickle-down effect via BTC & ETH ETFs. These ETFs generate a lot of news (media interest), upward price action in crypto, and should prop up the entire crypto market if BTC and ETH experience massive price spikes (Solana catches the tailwinds).
Future use cases (?): Most future use cases for Solana don’t necessarily need Solana or crypto to operate effectively (buzz kill for the crypto maxis)… That said, people are excited about: Drip (curated content); Hivemapper (mapping network); Helium (internet & cell service); Render (decentralized GPUs); Tiplink (send $ with link); Code (instant micropayments); Phoenix (onchain orderbook); etc. (Solana is fast so may work well for things like: GameFi, music dapps, social media, etc.).
Bullish market conditions (?): Considering gradual price increases for major cryptos over the past year – many think we are in a bull crypto market. This can be debated. However, if we are in a bull market (stocks and/or crypto) – there’s a good chance that the leading crypto projects like BTC, ETH, BNB, SOL, etc. will respond accordingly with value jumps (BTC & BNB recently hit new ATHs) – perhaps Solana is next?
Comparing Solana in 2024 to prior bull-market Solana (2021)…
The present status and price of Solana is significantly different than in the 2021 bull market with Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) funneling investors’ funds from the FTX exchange into Solana without their knowledge to inflate the value of SOL.
SBF & FTX: SBF extracted customer funds from the FTX platform and pumped them into Solana – making the price spike from <$5 per SOL to >$40 per SOL within ~2 months. Then again from ~$25 per SOL to over $250 within ~4 months. This was not organic growth for SOL – it was mostly driven by price manipulation from SBF & Alameda Research, followed by traders/retail piling in to ride the wave. Interest, usage, and active addresses massively declined thereafter.
Trending tokens: Some of the most popular tokens back in 2021 on Solana were: Raydium (RAY), Serum (SRM), Bonfida (FIDA), Oxygen (OXY), Maps.me (MAPS), Step Finance (STEP), Mango Markets (MNGO), PsyOptions (PSY), COPE, SAMO, MEDIA, and KIN. Most were for specific dApps and DeFi. These days in 2024 Solana is mostly known for its memecoins.
“Solana summer”: Solana was marketed extremely well in 2021 with merch drops to big bag holders. Its price exploded from ~$26 to ~$180 in just 2 months (Jul-Sep ’21). The combination of price appreciation and merch drops attracted even more attention to Solana. Influencers on Twitter/X were regularly showing off their Solana gear.
Whale holders & traders: In 2021 Solana was full of high IQ traders trying to out-jockey other high IQ traders & SBF/FTX. In 2021, the wealth distribution based on SOL holdings was also insane: large holders (10K-100K SOL) & top holders (1M-10M SOL) accounted for over 56% of the total Solana supply.
Potential cons associated with Solana…
Chain outages: This doesn’t really impact small-time retail investors who are moving a few thousand dollars and don’t care about precision timing of trades. However, if you’re moving a significant chunk of capital to close a position (e.g. leveraged), the chain cannot be down… a failed transaction here can turn a massive W to a massive L. For this reason, big time whales will gladly pay fees (e.g. $100 in “gas”) to settle on Ethereum vs. risk getting liquidated on Solana.
EVM vs. SVM (hidden code): SVM contracts run as pre-compiled binaries so you cannot audit and verify underlying code directly. Who wants to deposit a large sum of money into a contract when they can’t audit the code? In many cases Solana contracts aren’t open-source which is concerning if involved in DeFi (security & functionality).
MEV attacks: The Solana network is currently riddled with things called MEV (maximum extractable value) bots. These bots automatically find and execute profitable trading opportunities by monitoring transactions. These bots basically scam/rip-off users by manipulating transaction order in block creation. “Sandwich attacks” are giving Solana users the worst possible price on transactions.
DeFi apps: Solana is newer than Ethereum and has protocols that haven’t stood nearly the test of time as those on Ethereum (e.g. MakerDAO, AAVE, Compound, etc.). The longer a protocol is around, the less likely it is to fail in the future. Bridging to L2 on Ethereum is lower risk than foreign chain bridges due to inheriting security from L1. There is also less total on-chain capital in SOL than ETH – so less you can do.
Decentralization & security: Solana is more centralized than Ethereum (fewer total validator node operators due to high costs) and is less secure (e.g. network outages due to DoS attacks). Although it’s improving in both decentralization and security – it has a long way to go to match Ethereum.
Competitors: Many competitors are trying to gain stronger network effects including: Avalanche, BNB, Polkadot, Sui, Aptos, Cosmos, Kaspa, Near, Fantom, TRON, etc. Competitors are constantly innovating to overtake both Ethereum and Solana.
Ethereum: Lindy. Network effects, more decentralized, biggest team of devs, Vitalik Buterin, most applications, highest trust, and highest security. Has an ETF and regulatory support. Big financial institutions are looking to build on Ethereum and/or are considering it as a settlement layer for financial transactions. Roadmap execution continues.
Prediction Markets: Solana Price 2024-2025…
Polymarket:
Solana ETF approved in 2024? (R)
Odds: 7% ($191,736 bet that this will not happen)
Will ETH or SOL reach ATH first? (R)
ETH: 63% chance
SOL: 37% chance
Total bet as of June 2024: $20,466.
Solana all time high when? (R)
Q2: 4% ($42,806 bet)
Q3: 24% ($18,478 bet)
Q4: 18% ($13,754 bet)
No ATH 2024: 58% ($38,516 bet)
Most bets suggest that Solana is unlikely to hit a new ATH in 2024.
Manifold Markets:
Will the current staking yield for Solana (SOL) increase, decrease, or stay the same by EOY 2024? (R) (3 traders)
Increase: 67%
Decrease: 20%
No change: 13%
My Solana (SOL) Price Predictions for 2024-2025…
$200 to $300+. Solana spiked from ~$20 in September 2023 to ~$200 in March 2024 – up big from its bear market sideways chop (June 2022 to September 2023).
Because Solana is already up massively from this chop, I have a tough time believing that Solana will spike beyond $300 by EOY 2024 unless there’s a perfect storm: rate cuts, retail FOMO, heavy whale investment (institutions & big-bag traders), trickle-down from BTC/ETH ETFs, etc.
I like Raoul Pal’s hypothesis that Solana could end up the best risk-adjusted trade of this cycle based on: (1) on-chain growth metrics (total addresses, on-chain activity, DeFi TVL, DEX usage, Phantom wallet downloads, memecoins, network upgrades) & (2) SOL-ETH/SOL-BTC historical performance.
Retail generally likes Solana more than Ethereum right now. Why? Easier to use, lower transaction costs, significantly faster (as a Layer-1 blockchain), offers a variety of memecoins, has a strong community (social effects), has a better UI/UX and wallet (Phantom), and it continues getting better.
If retail continues using Solana and more traders opt to use Solana (perhaps after some upgrades like Firedancer) – this will boost Solana’s appeal such that institutions may consider hedging Ethereum investments by sinking more into Solana.
For the price of Solana to really spike in a bull market – we need both institutional interest AND retail FOMO (perfect storm).
As of current, I don’t think institutions are quite as hype on Solana due to the lack of an ETF (Ethereum now has an ETF and stronger regulatory clarity).
A Solana ETF is probably coming within 5 years – and if it keeps competing at a high level against Ethereum (via upgrades & network effects), it could experience a massive spike in adoption and market cap (potentially to $1000+ per SOL).
Anyways, if the economy & stock market stay strong – the bullish trend for Solana should continue until it reaches a new ATH.
However, there are always unknowns: crypto scandals (e.g. exchange hack, major scams, etc.), geopolitics (China, Russia, etc.), slowing economic growth, and/or Fed rate adjustments – that could interfere with the ascent of Solana.
We should also keep in mind that SOL’s price was heavily manipulated last cycle such that it’s ATH of ~$250 was driven by the SBF & FTX scheme – not organic investment.
The price appreciation in this cycle has been due to: Bitcoin ETF inflows, ETH ETF approval, Solana memecoins, and AI-related crypto projects… it’s unclear as to whether this is a true “bull market.”
Retail was also psychologically scarred from buying the top of last cycle and selling the bottom – so they may be a bit more apprehensive to invest in cryptos (especially altcoins) this time around (“thinking” rather than “aping”).
Is now an ideal time to buy into Solana (SOL)?
Unknown. From a risk-management perspective, now is NOT an ideal time to buy Solana.
Why? The ideal time to buy Solana was from June 2022 to October 2023 (~$10-$40) during sideways chop of the “bear market.” Solana already did a 5-20x from this period.
The best time to buy into any promising cryptocurrency is during “bear markets” when the sentiment is “Fear” or “Extreme Fear” and price has mostly stabilized while chopping sideways (at this point most people just stop discussing crypto altogether because it feels dead).
Now could be a decent time to buy in if you: (1) don’t care about losing money (think of it as a gamble); (2) have an exit strategy (sell at least half if bag doubles); (3) realize the potential asymmetric upside (could spike $300-$1000 this bull market).
Catalysts such as: trickle-down from ETF inflows (BTC & ETH), Fed rate cuts, memecoin mania, retail FOMO, direct institutional investment into SOL, Trump’s pro crypto stance, Firedancer update, etc. – could drive the price of Solana much higher than present.
Still, there is $3+ billion worth of sell pressure in the network at an average price of $150 per SOL and the token supply increased by 20% within the last 4 months – so some may be holding out for one last pump before they dump their bags.
Nobody knows what will happen – it’s up to you to make your own “investment” or “gambling” decisions.
Solana (SOL) vs. Ethereum (ETH) Debate…
Bankless recently hosted a debate between Ethereum researcher Justin Drake & Solana cofounder Anatoly Yakovenko that’s worth a listen if you’re interested in a comparison.
Solana pros:
High Throughput: Solana boasts very high transaction speeds and throughput, processing thousands of transactions per second (TPS), which can go up to 65,000 TPS.
Low Fees: Transaction fees on Solana are significantly lower than Ethereum, often costing a fraction of a cent.
Low Latency: Solana has very low block times, around 400 milliseconds, which translates to near-instant transaction confirmations.
Optimized for Hardware: Solana's design takes advantage of hardware advancements, expecting future hardware improvements to further boost performance.
Developer & User Focus: Solana focuses heavily on user experience and developer ease, aiming to build applications that attract users by offering fast and cheap transactions.
Growing Ecosystem: Solana has a growing number of users, applications, and overall adoption, with significant traction in certain sectors.
Solana cons:
Network Stability: Solana has faced several network outages and stability issues, which can undermine trust in its reliability.
Economic Security: There is a debate over Solana's economic security model and whether it can provide robust security against attacks, especially without high staking rewards.
Centralization Risks: Due to its design that heavily relies on sophisticated hardware, there are concerns about centralization, as only those with advanced infrastructure can effectively participate in the network.
Lack of Client Diversity: Solana currently lacks multiple client implementations, which can lead to network vulnerabilities if the single client has issues.
Ethereum pros:
Strong Network Effects: Ethereum has the largest ecosystem of decentralized applications (dApps), developers, and users, benefiting from significant network effects.
High Security: Ethereum's security model, including its switch to Proof of Stake (PoS) and high levels of economic security, is robust and trusted.
Decentralization: Ethereum emphasizes decentralization, with numerous nodes and clients contributing to a highly distributed network.
Synchronous Composability: Ethereum allows different applications to interact seamlessly within the same environment, fostering innovation and integration.
Mature Ecosystem: Ethereum's ecosystem includes significant financial applications, stablecoins, and DeFi projects, contributing to its dominance in the blockchain space.
Scalability Solutions: With Layer 2 solutions and sharding on the horizon, Ethereum aims to scale while maintaining decentralization and security.
Ethereum cons:
High Fees: Ethereum transaction fees can be very high, especially during network congestion, making it less accessible for small transactions.
Slower Transactions: Ethereum's block times are longer, resulting in slower transaction confirmations compared to Solana.
Fragmentation: The use of multiple Layer 2 solutions can lead to fragmentation, complicating the user experience and developer efforts.
Complexity of Upgrades: Due to its large and diverse ecosystem, implementing upgrades and changes in Ethereum can be slow and complex, requiring broad consensus.
What is your price prediction for Solana (SOL) in 2024?
Do you own Solana? Is it a sizable chunk of your crypto portfolio?
What is the rationale behind your price prediction? Did you think this through or are you just guessing?
Do you think Solana (SOL) continues to outperform both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH)? Or do you think Solana’s price stagnates or drops while Bitcoin and Ethereum continue increasing?