What’s Driving Solana’s (SOL) Dramatic Collapse?

Solana’s downward spiral intensified on Monday, February 24, as SOL plummeted over 10% to hit $155 – levels last seen in mid-October last year.

Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) took a beating Monday evening as SOL price dropped 10.2% to hit $155 — levels last seen in mid-October last year.

The apex altcoin is now down 14% for the week and close to 40% in the last 30 days. With investors left scratching their heads, Benzinga takes a look at some of the factors impacting Solana price.

What Happened: Solana price took a hit Monday, following a turbulent weekend that saw two major crypto hacks.

On Saturday, Binance-owned crypto exchange ByBit was hacked to the tune of $1.4 billion in various crypto assets.

The hack marks the largest-ever crypto hack in the history of the industry.

Later, on Sunday, stablecoin bank 0xInfini was hacked for nearly $49.5 million.

The incident follows the closure of 0xInfini’s Curve Finance贿赂池, which was drained earlier this month.

These incidents led to a drop in industry market cap, which fell by more than 3%, or $93 billion, to settle around $3.1 trillion.

The events also led to a shift in industry sentiment from Greed — last week — to Neutral and borderline Fear today.

Biggest Factor Dragging SOL Prices Today:

The shift in market sentiment towards cryptos partly explains why SOL prices are down today.

However, the broader market downturn isn’t the only factor impacting Solana price.

The biggest markdown for the sixth largest altcoin’s prices may be attributed to the fear, uncertainty and doubt associated with the unlocking of Solana tokens by the FTX estate later this week.

This week, FTX will unlock 11.2 million SOL tokens, currently valued at more than $1.7 billion, on Saturday, March 1.

Analysts and investors are concerned that the sell pressure associated with such an event will cause massive volatility and possibly push SOL prices further down.

These sentiments are also backed by key Solana price data metrics. For example, Solana has a negative Open-Interest (OI) Weighted Funding Rate of -0.0017%, according to data from Coinglass.

This implies that the number of traders betting on the price of Solana to crash further are higher than those expecting it to go up.

See More: Best Crypto Scanners

Will Solana Rebound? Eventually, Solana is likely to rebound and possibly rally to a new all-time high before the end of this year.

Its short-term price action will, however, remain shaky as it grapples with a bearish market, the unraveling Libra Scandal, and now — the FTX unlock.