Solana (SOL) Is the Altcoin That Is Suffering the Most, and the Reason Is Not Just the Market

February 2025 is proving to be a negative month for the price of SOL, the native cryptocurrency of Solana.

Solana (SOL) price has been on a downturn in February 2025, with a significant decline that may continue. Here's a closer look at the factors impacting SOL's price performance.

Solana's all-time high was $294 on January 19, coinciding with the launch of Trump's memecoin on the Solana blockchain. From $125 in September 2024, SOL's price surged rapidly, notching a +66% gain in 18 days of November. This growth was partly fueled by the "Trump trade," with Gary Gensler stepping down as SEC Chair and several key crypto cases closing.

However, Solana's boom was also driven by the massive success of Pump.fun and memecoins on the network.

Solana's troubles began with Trump's memecoin launch, with its token price initially surging to $70 but crashing to $30 three days later. By the second week post-launch, the token's price had dropped below $20. In recent weeks, it has hovered around $15, showing a descending lateralization that may still be unfolding.

President Milei's promotion of a scamcoin on Solana also contributed to the network's shitcoin hype.

Solana's (SOL) price has been on a downturn, with a significant decline that may continue. Here's a closer look at the factors impacting SOL's price performance.

Solana's all-time high was $294 on January 19, coinciding with the launch of Trump's memecoin on the Solana blockchain. From $125 in September 2024, SOL's price surged rapidly, notching a +66% gain in 18 days of November. This growth was partly fueled by the "Trump trade," with Gary Gensler stepping down as SEC Chair and several key crypto cases closing.

However, Solana's boom was also driven by the massive success of Pump.fun and memecoins on the network.

Solana's troubles began with Trump's memecoin launch, with its token initially surging to $70 but crashing to $30 three days later. By the second week post-launch, the token's price had dropped below $20. In recent weeks, it has hovered around $15, showing a descending lateralization that may still be unfolding.

President Milei's promotion of a scamcoin on Solana also contributed to the network's shitcoin hype. As of February 1st, SOL's price was above $220, but it began a decline that may not be over yet. On February 3rd, it dropped to nearly $180 before recovering briefly. By February 17th, it fell below that level and has since dropped under $160. Currently, it's down -47% from its all-time highs a month ago, with a -15% loss in the last seven days.

The problem is that not only is the entire sector of memecoins, and shitcoins in general, going through a really tough time, but the same thing applies to altcoins in general. Taking the last seven days as a reference, while BTC is essentially even, ETH is at -3%, XRP at -9%, BNB at -5%, and Dogecoin at -13%. The fact that SOL in recent days is losing more than all these altcoins clearly reveals that its decline is not solely linked to the general drop in altcoins.

In these seven days, Bitcoin's dominance has risen from 60.7% to 61.6%, and for a metric like this, it is a significant increase in such a short time.

In fact, the altseason index of CMC has dropped from 38 to 27 points, getting very close to those 25 points below which the Bitcoin season begins, that is, a period in which BTC performs significantly better than altcoins, on average.

Furthermore, there is an ongoing slowdown in on-chain activity on Solana, and an imminent token unlock. In light of all this, there are those who believe that the price of SOL could drop even below $150 in the short term, but it is not certain that in the medium term it could then start to rise again.

It was also discovered that the whales have increased their bearish bets on SOL with options on Deribit. In fact, the majority of trades on SOL were about put options, precisely those used to protect against bear markets.

Note that the trading volume on Solana was concentrated 80% on put contracts, while for example this percentage was only 40% for BTC and 37.5% for ETH.

Moreover, on the first of March, there will be an important token unlocking event (11.2 million