What’s up everybody, it’s Thomas Bahamas and you are here for another episode of Solana Weekly where we discuss what has been going down on Solana in the last week and try to figure out the long term implications. We had another amazing week where we saw memecoin mania go mainstream, prices rocketed, flash crashed, and now we’re so back. Let’s dive into just how Solana is THE chain for trading memes, talk about the Solana price and strength versus the market, and some of my favorite news from the week.
Prices:
Sol Price: 189.92 - up from 163 last week, but it sure doesn’t feel like it. Topping out at $212, we all thought we were shooting straight to ATH and beyond. But we got ourselves a pullback and a flash crash led by a massive BTC sell that someone messed up massively on. BTC was sold for 12k, and the market reacted negatively. We saw more outflows on the BTC ETF than inflows and dipped back down to where we were last week in SOL around 160. The recovery was pretty instant and is just showing the strength of SOL and proving out how early in the cycle we are. I was talking about 178 being a good level of resistance and I think we’re seeing that level’s importance now. If we hold that as support moving forward I think we can get to our ATH’s. I will once again urge everyone to get your Solana on a hardware device and stake it. This is the best security practice, allows to you get 7-8% annual yield on your Solana, and also has the amazing effect of not being incredibly liquid and wanting to dump on a dip. It’s human psychology and this is a game we have to play against ourselves. I didn’t even consider selling on this dip, if I did I only have a small portion of my holdings that are liquid and on hot wallets so that it wouldn’t have been a meaningful amount. But it looked like it was going to 0 when it was around 160, I was comfy in cold storage and staked. Big lessons in thinking long term vs short term.
Sol Eth: .05379 - The eth maxis in disbelief as this chart mooned.
Sol BTC: .002824 - this is on an uptrend and we love to see it. Every finance and macro podcast I’ve listened to is just getting me more and more bullish on BTC. It’s the etf flows, it’s the halvening, but it’s also where we are at as a country. Inflation is on the rise, seeing a lot of talks of 4-5% being the new normal, and gold and Bitcoin are the counter to this. Bitcoin being the more mobile, internet native, and shiny new toy that’s accessible in your IRA is shining. I am so bullish on Bitcoin right now I have a hard time keeping any fiat around. All of this combining with a renaissance of on chain activity with the release of ordinals, and now runes bringing shitcoins to Bitcoin and we have ourselves a hot ball of money that cannot be ignored. We even have presidential candidates talking about Bitcoin, with Trump talking highly on it, RFK owns it. Trump has the hilarious potential of bridging the gap between the crypto community and our conservative parents on this one.
My IRA’s are hilarious now, it’s Coinbase, BTC ETF’s, and through Alto IRA I have a Bonk fund. These are Tax Advantaged accounts so I will simply withdraw these and pay no taxes when I’m old AF and brag to my buddies at the country clubs about the good old degening ERA of the roaring 20’s.
Bonk Market Cap: 1.5 billion.
Overall take on market:
Are we getting ahead of ourselves?
Solana Price at ATH while the network struggling is also at ATH is something that’s happened before. When Sol hit $260 last time it was actually unusable. We are heading right back up that way and aren’t running as smooth. I hate to have to go over this because Solana is the chain that settles at the speed of light, but we are experiencing a pretty big degradation in speed. This has something to do with the transactions not landing and supposedly raising the fees does not actually solve it. As long as your fees are above the minimum, your transaction has the same probability of landing as one that is 10x higher. This will be addressed in the next release of 1.18, but we are not in the clear yet. We are seeing unprecedented amounts of usage and we are still up and running, but there are some delays and in particular some of the dapps and protocols aren’t set up for this properly. The joy of building on Solana is not having to worry about fees, but we actually do. We need to have an option to increase fees if they are not in the wallet, this will improve your odds of landing a transaction drastically. I actually don’t think we are getting ahead of ourselves, where we are at TODAY, Solana is better suited for on chain activity than ETH and all it’s L2’s and is still 10x less valuable. With the improvements around the corner of 1.18 and Firedancer later this year, we have a long term bullish view that can’t be stopped. Higher.
We’re seeing the fees of the network at ATH while people overpay for transactions. As long as your settings are above the min, you are good. While people are overpaying for these transactions Solana has actually been burning more Sol than it generates, making it ULTRASOUND money. Hilarious, and there were more fees on Solana than Eth for the first time ever. Crazy that the approach of scaling users and keeping transaction fees super low is actually panning out to be the way to go. Eth maxis are in absolute shambles. The fee market is not at it’s ultimate form yet and paying higher for a transaction does not guarantee it landing, however this will be changing in the shorter term.
To the market:
Meme coins have taken center stage on Solana and have gotten out of hand. From Tremp and Jeo Boden, to a presale of a wallet listed on Twitter being worth over a billion dollars. The presale meta came and people have sent millions to wallet addresses that have been tweeted out. It’s insanity, but beautiful. Amazing marketing ploys and while I didn’t participate it sure seems like everyone else did. I think most of these got a pretty sturdy correction when we dipped, but a lot of these are here to stay. Solana will be a memecoin chain because the experience is better, and it’s showing. The quick transactions and amazing protocols make the trading experience so good that I don’t see anyone that came here from other chains leaving. You get instant finality, low slippage, can use limit orders, DCA in, DCA out, we are really spoiled with all the infra that we have. Memes are tokenized attention and a fantastic casino. Maybe the best one ever built. Yes it’s wild gambling and speculation and people will get wrecked, but no one is doing this against their will. This is the era of hyper speculation. People are following DegenSpartans’s advice and are willing to hyper gamble their way into generational wealth or become a wagecuck for the rest of their life. This is the way the economy is going and crypto is the best vehicle for the job.
Sound stupid?
Go to a crowded gas station and half the people are buying smokes and lotto tickets. These degens are doing the same thing but it’s Zyn nicotine pouches and shitcoins. It gives them a shot, a way out.
Double standards of reporting - Solana reports are terrible saying how congested it is, Base fees are bullish for demand, it’s insane. These reporters need to be held accountable yes i’m looking at you Coindesk.
Defi: Kamino points to an end soon, Parcl points ending soon, I think it’s about time we get some more tokens dropped and it seems like that’s the case.
BonkRewards are coming in thick, if you locked some for only a month you can claim your rewards and your tokens back, really good return. You get a portion of the fees from all their different protocols and it was quite lucrative. Not to mention that you lock up Bonk and you don’t have to stress about the day to day moves, just carry on while price eventually goes up. Bonk also released Bonk madness where you can make a March Madness bracket, mint it as an NFT and the winner gets something like $130k.
NFT's: Dead, bloodbath for NFT’s on Solana right now. Everything hit, DAA hit 5, Foxes hit 7, SMB’s were selling under 40, it’s just across the board. My gut is telling me we’re near the bottom. I think memecoin mania is still going to happen, but maybe people won’t be aping everything in after this last correction. I also think that some of these Defi platforms have been sucking in all the liquidity. Kamino’s points for season one end in a couple days and a bunch of Sol will be moved out, buying NFT’s here is a big brain move and we’ll see if it happens. Our quekz held up pretty well on the dip, and they are the Sol NFT I’m most bullish on. A Golfn nft just dropped and i’m going to buy one. I don’t want to, it’s probably a terrible financial move, but I’m a golfer, I love Solana, and if I missed it I would buy it at 20 Sol. So might as well pony up 4 sol for it now, minted at 4, small collection, and some sort of golf to earn ponzi I hope. But this is the type of buying opportunity we wanted 5 months ago, so if you believe in Sol NFT’s, here’s your dip.
Bitcoin NFT’s are popping off, thats right it’s ordinal season.
Protocol of the week: Flexlend - if you have stables, throw them in there and watch the 10-20% yields flow. There is no way that this could be built in Tradfi and I think it’s an amazing product. I don’t think this is the time for stables, but if you do have them, you can deposit them into Flexlend, which will then rebalance them into different Defi Protocols that have the highest yield. This sounds too good to be true, but as this grows, this is actually one of those products that’s a win win for customers and these defi protocols. Say MarginFi is running low on stables based on people borrowing too much, they offer a higher yield on stables because they need more. Here comes Flexlend with that liquidity and will happily lend those stables for a high yield. It’s like a short term liquidity filler for defi and we get to reap the benefits.
Token of the week: I could say a memecoin, but I think I’m going to stick with Solana itself, we saw a 160-212 candle, I didn’t expect that level of volatility, but this is what we see in a bull market and I’m here for it.
As always, thanks for tuning in, like, subscribe, and leave a review if you found this useful. We’ve got a crazy few months coming up and let’s make sure that we get the most out of it. Looking forward to next week, make sure you all get your taxes in and your stables out.
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