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For anyone wondering “Should I buy Solana coin now?”, know that your investment horizon and risk tolerance are the two most important factors to consider. The Solana blockchain has demonstrated remarkable growth and adoption, and if you believe in its long-term potential, buying SOL now could prove to be a prudent choice.
That’s because Solana is one of the few cryptocurrencies that has partnered with Visa, it has one of the largest ecosystems where you can play Web3 games and earn money, you can mint or trade NFTs or simply yield farm a variety of tokens. These are some of the many use cases for Solana, which makes it one of the best investments in the crypto space right now.
Should You Buy Solana Coin?
Solana offers lightning-fast transactions with the lowest transaction costs compared to all other blockchains. Its ecosystem is growing with new applications being launched daily. This is the only major blockchain that has launched its own smartphone and has partnered with Visa for USDC settlements.
So is Solana coin a good investment?
Solana is trading 92% below its peak price of $260. Given the low risk and high potential to skyrocket, Solana is one of the best cryptocurrencies to buy at the moment.
How Solana Coin Has Performed Since Launch & This Year
The Solana Foundation was established in 2017 by Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal when they started raising funds to develop a new crypto network. The Solana coin, however, was officially launched three years later in March 2020 after raising $1.76 million in a public token auction.
In April, the coin was listed on major exchanges with a starting price of $0.98 per coin. A few months later, it dropped to $0.51, marking SOL’s all-time low.
After that, the SOL price started to climb, reaching the top at $260 in November 2021, at the same time when Bitcoin topped $68,000. This marked a total of 26,430% gain from the listing price to the top. If you invested $10,000 at the price of $0.98 per coin, you would have $2,548,000 at the top.
However, just as all riskier assets took a blow with rising interest rates, SOL started to slowly drop, reaching a bottom at $8.9 per coin following the FTX crash. Despite that, SOL is still up, trading in a narrow range of between $20 and $26 for most of this year.
- Solana coin launch in March 2020
- SOL traded at $0.98 in April 2020 when it launched on exchanges
- Bottom in June 2020 of $0.51
- $260 top in November 2021, marking a 26,430% gain since launch
- New bottom in November 2022 at $8.9
- Trades between $20 and $26 for most of 2023
What Factors Determine the Price of Solana & its Potential?
Solana is growing in popularity in the crypto space due to its impressive scalability, low transaction costs and blazing-fast transaction speed. To determine SOL’s future price and its potential, we have to see what Solana does better than other blockchains.
Low Transaction Costs
Solana is different from all leading blockchains because of its tech. It uses a unique consensus mechanism, called Proof of History (PoH), along with a high-speed Runtime. The latter is a concurrent transaction processor that allows for transactions to execute in parallel instead of one by one in line.
This is something that Visa praised in its Solana deep dive as the company runs a USDC settlement payment test with the Solana blockchain to improve the speed of cross-border settlement.
Unlike Ethereum where the transaction fee, called a gas fee, is high and often unpredictable. Solana transactions typically cost less than $0.001 and they almost never go above that. For comparison, the average cost is $7 per transaction on Ethereum, but during times of high congestion, it can go as high as six digits as we’ve seen when a whale paid 64 ETH ($119k) for a single transaction.
Transaction congestion can also happen on Solana. However, the team has a different approach: if a single account — or an asset — becomes busy due to high transaction demand, congestion will only affect that particular account and not the entire Solana blockchain. This isn’t the case with Ethereum where congestion affects everyone using the blockchain at that particular moment.
Fast Transaction Settlement
To use a blockchain as a payment network it has to be cheap and fast. Ethereum, for example, has an average TPS (transaction per second) of 12. Add the high gas fees on top and it makes Ethereum an unviable chain for payment processing.
Solana, as we’ve seen, offers low transaction costs but transactions are also fast. Solana targets a slot time of 400 milliseconds for transaction finality, meaning it takes a single transaction less than a second to process. In reality, Solana averages 400 TPS with an occasional surge of 2,000 TPS during peak demand.
This is going to get a huge boost with Jump Crypto’s Firedancer. This is a new validator client (think Bitcoin miner), that is designed to improve performance and scalability. In a live demo at Breakpoint 2022, the Firedancer client processed 1.2 million TPS.
Firedancer is designed to increase the number of concurrent transactions, but also to add sharding support so the blockchain can scale horizontally.
Even without Firedancer, Solana is still faster than all other blockchains at the moment.
Ecosystem Development
Solana is a programmable blockchain like Ethereum, meaning you can build applications on top, called dApps (decentralized applications). Solana is among the blockchains with the most dApps that range from lending and borrowing to gaming.
The total value locked (TVL) on the Solana blockchain stands at $312 million, down from $9.9 billion at its peak. Despite that, there are more and more dApps coming out every day.
Some of the most popular applications on the Solana blockchain include:
- Marinade Finance is a liquid staking platform, meaning that you can stake your SOL tokens for a certain annual percentage yield (APY) and get a liquid token in return called mSOL (Marinade SOL). You can use your mSOL to stake it on other platforms for an additional APY, use it as collateral when you borrow other cryptocurrencies or simply swap it for any other token on the Solana blockchain.
- Solend is the most popular lending platform on Solana where you can lend and borrow a variety of cryptocurrencies including SOL, USDC, USDT and many other Solana cryptos. The cool thing about this platform is that anyone can create a lending pool.
- Jupiter Aggregator is a swap aggregator on Solana where you can swap any Solana coin with the best rate, fast and cheap. You can also set limit orders and DCA orders, making Jupiter a solid trading platform as well.
- Orca is a concentrated liquidity automated market maker (AMM) where you can trade or yield farm variety of tokens. You can customize your yield by setting up price ranges, risk and how fast your position can rebalance itself.
- Phantom wallet is a popular Solana wallet where you can store your cryptocurrencies and NFTs. You can also swap coins via Jupiter directly from the wallet, you can list your NFTs on marketplaces or you can stake your SOL directly from your wallet. Recently, Phantom launched multichain support for Ethereum and Polygon where you can seamlessly hold coins and NFTs from all three chains into one wallet.
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)
Being fast and cheap, Solana is the ultimate blockchain for NFT and Web3 game development. Recently, Solana released compressed NFTs, which reduce the cost of minting and managing NFTs by storing the data off-chain to minimize storage costs.
This makes a compressed NFT mint cost 0.0000005 SOL. For $11,000 you can mint one billion NFTs on Solana. For comparison, minting an NFT on Polygon, a layer 2 Ethereum blockchain, costs $0.05. This will make one billion NFTs minted on Polygon cost $50 million.
Solana manages to achieve this with a program called Bugglegum, which stores each NFT in a Merkle tree. This removes the need for creating mint, token and metadata accounts, which otherwise would cost SOL to create.
Even before compressed NFTs were a thing, Solana was actively climbing the NFT volume charts. Ethereum, being the most popular blockchain, is leading all-time NFT sales volume with over $44 billion, closely followed by Ronin, an EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) blockchain of the Web3 game Axie Infinity, according to Cryptoslam NFT volume data.
Solana is in the third spot by NFT volume, making $4.1 billion in all-time trading volume. This is significantly more than all other NFT blockchains, it’s even more than the combined NFT trading volume of Polygon, Cardano and Immutable X, which are also popular NFT blockchains.
Wondering, “Should I buy Solana coin now?” especially before it tries to overtake Ethereum’s NFT volume? That may seem far-fetched for now. But with compressed NFTs and growing user numbers, this could change in the years to come. All these users will need Solana coins to transact on the blockchain, making buying SOL a potentially lucrative investment.
Some of the leading NFT platforms on Solana include Magic Eden, Tensor, OpenSea, Hyperspace and Rarible where you can list and trade your NFTs.
Aside from the strong NFT marketplace, the ecosystem has also developed other use cases for NFTs. You can borrow SOL against your NFTs, you can trade them peer-to-peer, and you can create auctions and raffles via platforms like Sharky.fi and Citrus.
Web3 Gaming
Given Web3 games use NFTs to represent in-game assets such as characters and items, Solana is probably the best blockchain for this purpose.
There is a growing number of Web3 games built on Solana. Some of them use gaming engines like Unreal 5 and some use browsers.
These are the most popular games on Solana at the moment:
The Heist. This is a risk-based active staking game where you send (stake) your Chimps, Gorillas and Orangutan NFTs across different heist locations in Peel City to earn COCO tokens. This is the most popular NFT game on Solana with over 94,000 SOL trading volume in the past 30 days.
Reavers. This game has a similar concept to the Heist, except it is based on pirates and pillaging islands where you earn BOOTY tokens. The game launched its NFTs with a massive trading volume of over 40,000 SOL in less than a day after mint.
Star Atlas. This is the most ambitious Web3 game not only on the Solana blockchain but probably across the entire Web3 space. The game has a fully on-chain economy that no other game has, where you can extract resources, craft items and eventually fight other players for control over star systems.
At the moment, you can try the Unreal Engine 5 Showroom available for download on the Epic store. In the showroom, you can fly your NFT ships while the team works on the multiplayer racing track, which is expected to be released sometime in 2023.
There is also a browser-based version, launched on September 21, which offers over $1.2 million worth of rewards via raffles and item crafting.
Aurory. This is a Web3 tactical RPG game with Japanese anime-style art. Players compete against each other using creatures called Nefties, all of which are NFTs, hence the name. Nefties can be traded on a secondary marketplace like Magic Eden, they can be hatched and evolved. The in-game currency is AURY.
StepN, the most-popular move-to-earn game first started on Solana before going multi-chain. Other popular Solana games are Ev.io, Fidelion, Honeyland, DeFi Kingdoms and many more.
For anyone wondering “should I buy Solana coin” to play these games, yes. You will need SOL as well as the game’s native token to participate in these Web3 games.
Solana Price Forecast for 2023, 2024, 2025, 2030
Solana coin price is largely influenced by macroeconomic factors that affect all other riskier assets like cryptocurrencies and tech stocks. Borrowing money to invest in crypto is more expensive due to high interest rates, while other investments like bonds are lucrative to investors in this current economic climate.
Will Solana coin go up? As soon as interest rates start to go down and macroeconomic factors change, we could see the prices go up. Given Solana has massive use cases, it is likely to be one of the top performers in the next bull run.
In 2023, the price may still bounce in its narrow range of between $20 and $26, but in late 2024 and early 2025, we could see the price try to retest some of its previous highs, notability the $75 and $100 price levels.
Is Solana coin still a good investment? By 2030 if economic factors change, such as inflation drops and interest rates move closer to zero, we could see Solana try to test its previous top at $260 and even try to surpass it.
Some analysts believe we could see Solana drop to $3. But if it failed to get to this point after the FTX crash, it’s unlikely we will see it anytime soon.
Other analysts are more optimistic, claiming “Solana is expected to have a minimum price of $320.36, a maximum of $382.50, and an average value of $331.89.” in 2030
So is now a good time to buy Solana coin? If you believe in Solana’s long-term potential, now could be a good time to invest in this blockchain. Explore our how to buy Solana guide for a beginner’s walkthrough from start to finish.
Solana’s Utility – How Could it be Used in the Future?
Being fast and cheap, Solana is already on the radar of large financial institutions. Visa partnered with Solana for faster credit card payments with the USDC stablecoin and Solana has been working with Google Cloud to enable high-performance use cases.
What’s more, Google is running a validator node already, helping secure the Solana network and validate transactions.
Solana Pay has already integrated a plug-in with Shopify for USDC payments, which makes everyone who sets up a Shopify store accept USDC or other cryptocurrencies.
Growing decentralized finance (DeFi) Ecosystem
Solana has already established itself in the DeFi space, offering users the ability to execute transactions and interact with DeFi protocols at incredibly low costs and high speeds.
With over 100 dApps on the Solana blockchain for yield farming and lending, the Solana blockchain is already leading the way for DeFi. The foundations have been laid out for the new users to onboard when the time comes.
So is Solana coin worth buying? All these dApps require SOL to work on the blockchain, which will increase demand for the Solana coin once more users arrive.
NFT Marketplaces
Solana has positioned itself as a competitive player in the NFT space, trailing behind Ethereum in trading volume but far ahead of Polygon, Cardano and Immutable X. Its fast and cost-effective blockchain infrastructure makes it an ideal choice for NFT marketplaces, enabling creators to mint, trade, and sell digital assets with minimal gas fees and congestion.
Artists, game developers, and content creators are likely to gravitate toward Solana for NFT-related projects in the future as the space grows in popularity.
Web3 Gaming
Blockchain-based gaming and metaverses can leverage Solana’s high throughput and low latency to provide seamless and immersive gaming experiences. Gamers can expect faster in-game transactions, tokenized assets, and unique gaming experiences that take advantage of blockchain technology.
With dozens of games being built on Solana, this trend is going to grow. Once the Firedancer validator comes online to increase transaction speed, Solana could take millions of gamers to interact with Web3 games on Solana and make it seamless.
If you still wonder, “Should I buy Solana coin now?” know that all these games will require SOL to transact on the blockchain. This will likely increase demand for the coin and increase its price.
Solana recently deployed its Saga smartphone, which uses Android and has Web3 functionality. This includes a dApp Store where you can download Solana’s DeFi protocols for lending, swapping and even minting your photos as NFTs. Most importantly, though, Solana has a seed vault. This is a feature that protects your seed phrase from malicious actors, making it almost impossible to hack your phone and steal your crypto. The smartphone is built with OSOM and provides a 6.67-inch OLED display, 512 GB storage and 12 GB RAM, putting it on par with most high-end smartphones. For a launch price of $1,000, it may have seemed quite expensive for a niche phone, but its current price of $599 makes it more affordable for crypto enthusiasts.Solana Smartphone
Is Solana a Better Short-Term or Long-Term Investment?
Whether Solana is a better short-term or long-term investment depends on your goals, risk tolerance and market outlook. Here’s what to consider before investing in Solana:
Price volatility
Short-term investments in cryptocurrencies like SOL are easily influenced by price volatility. Aside from humans who constantly buy and sell, there are bots that influence the price when they execute trades in bulk.
If you’re looking to buy SOL for the short term, you need to be aware that the potential upside is limited by the current macroeconomic trends, making the reward small compared to long-term investment. To minimize the risk, you should have stop-loss orders in place, as well as a buy order near a strong price level, like $16 and $20.
Another question you may have is: “Is it a good time to buy Solana coin?” Given the potential return is at least 100% in the next couple of years, buying Solana now for the long-term could be a prudent option.
Risk Tolerance
Investing in any cryptocurrency comes with risk. Your funds can be stolen by clicking a malicious link or a big country like the US could ban the use of crypto, causing the overall crypto market prices to plummet.
But if you’re wondering “Is investing in Solana a good idea” given the risk, make sure you invest only what you can afford to lose. Setting stop-loss orders, meaning your position would automatically close when a certain price is reached, is another way of mitigating risk if you’re over-invested.
When you buy your Solana coins, you have to keep them safe. Here’s how to do it:How to Protect Yourself Against Crypto Scams and Fraud
What Expert Traders Say on Whether You Should Buy Solana Coin
YouTube crypto influencer Coinsider says he is buying SOL as much as possible. The reason, according to Coinsider, is because Solana has a growing ecosystem of DeFi projects, it has a growing number of developers and he believes that the Solana smartphone was a good move.
Coinsider predicts that Solana can trade at $300 sometime in the future.
Altcoin Daily shared Raoul Pal’s Solana thoughts in a recent video. Pal said he’s betting on Solana for the next bull run and believes SOL can hit between $500 and $1,000.
Not everyone is convinced about Solana’s bright future, though. CoinCodex expects Solana to trade at $125 by 2030, never breaking the peak of $260.
Even if that’s the case, though, that’s still way higher than the current price of around $20 per coin.
Where to Buy Solana? Best Crypto Exchanges Revealed
Solana is available to buy on the best crypto exchanges, like eToro or Coinbase.
1. eToro – Overall Best Crypto Broker Offering SOL & 90+ Altcoins, Supports Copy Trading, Low Fees, and is Highly Regulated
eToro is one of the most popular trading platforms where you can buy over 60 cryptocurrencies, including Solana, Bitcoin and Ethereum with a 1% fee per trade. eToro also offers a crypto wallet app, called eToro Money, where you can store your coins.
The advantage of this wallet compared to other wallets is that you can’t lose your private keys. This means that in case you lose your private keys, eToro can help you restore them, which isn’t the case with other crypto wallets.
eToro Money comes with an on-chain address, meaning you can move your crypto whenever you want to any other on-chain address.
Another advantage of eToro compared to other crypto trading platforms is that you can also trade stocks and ETFs with a $0 commission.
What makes eToro unique, though, is that you can use copy trading. The way this works is you find a trader with a solid track record and you start copying their trades.
This can be an excellent tool for beginners who want to learn how to trade as they can see what the experienced traders buy and sell, but it can also be a good option for hands-off investors who don’t want to glance at the screen numbers every five minutes to find the right price to trade.
In case you have questions, you can reach out to eToro’s customer service via online chat or directly on WhatsApp if you hold a balance of $5,000 or more in your account.
Worth noting is that eToro is regulated by the CySEC, FCA and ASIC.
Pros Cons
| Cryptocurrency Exchange | eToro |
| Available cryptocurrencies | 80 cryptos |
| Payment methods | eToro Money, Credit/Debit cards, PayPal, Neteller, Skrill, Rapid transfer, iDeal, Klarna/Sofort Banking, Bank Transfer, Online Banking-Trustly, Przelewy 24 |
| Fee for buying Solana coins | 1% of the amount, meaning if you buy $100 worth of Solana, you will pay $1 fee |
| Minimum Deposit | $10 |
| Regulations | Cryptocurrencies aren’t regulated. Stocks and ETF trading is regulated by CySEC, FCA, ASIC |
| Non-trading fees | $10 per month inactivity fee if you don’t log in for 12 months. $5 withdrawal fee. Conversion fee when depositing non-USD currencies |
2. Coinbase – A Leading Crypto Exchange With Over 290 Cryptocurrencies, Offering a Crypto Wallet to Store or Trade Your NFTs
Coinbase is one of the largest crypto exchanges in the US. It offers all things Web3, including cryptocurrencies, NFTs and even ENS (Ethereum Name Service) usernames via its Coinbase Wallet.
Usernames are a cool feature because you can have your name be john.eth instead of a 42-digit wallet address, so every time someone transfers you funds, they can only use your username and your funds will land in your wallet.
You can trade over 250 cryptocurrencies, including the most popular Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana, but also some less popular coins and tokens. Coinbase uses the maker-taker fee model for pricing trades, meaning when you place an order (market making), you get one fee, and when you execute a market order (market taking), you get another fee.
The taker fee ranges between 0.05% and 0.6%, while the maker fee ranges from 0.00% to 0.40%. This means if you place a limit order and wait for the market to fill it, you could pay less in fees than buying directly from the market.
Coinbase also lets you stake your crypto with an APY of up to 10%. Solana comes with a 4.53% APY, which is lower than the average 8% APY you can get by staking your SOL directly with a validator or the 7.35% you can get from staking with Marinade Finance a DeFi protocol on Solana.
Pros Cons
| Cryptocurrency Exchange | Coinbase |
| Available cryptocurrencies | 290+ |
| Payment methods | Bank account (ACH), Debit/Credit card, Wire transfer, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay |
| Fee for buying Solana coins | Fee depends on the amount you buy and what type of order you place. Buying anywhere between $0 and $10K will cost either 0.4% or 0.6% depending on whether it’s a market or limit order |
| Minimum Deposit | $50 minimum initial deposit |
| Regulations | National Futures Association (NFA) |
| Non-trading fees | Up to 35% commission for staking tokens, ACH transfer free, Wire transfer $10 deposit and $25 withdrawal fee, SEPA €0.15, Swift deposit free, withdrawal £1 |
Solana’s Bull Case for 2030 is $260 but Bitcoin Minetrix could 10x in 2023
Bitcoin Minetrix (BTCMTX) is cloud mining solution for crypto users, which solves one major issue of Bitcoin — the need for expensive hardware and copious amounts of electricity to mine it.
The solution is called stake-to-mine where you buy BTCMTX tokens via an Ethereum wallet like MetaMask and stake your BTCMTX to earn token credits. You can burn these credits in exchange for Bitcoin cloud mining power.
These mining credits are non-transferable ERC-20 tokens, meaning if you earned them, you can use them, but you can’t transfer them to another wallet. Once you burn the tokens for Bitcoin mining time, you can transfer your mined BTC to a personal wallet.
BTCMTX tokens are in a presale stage where you can buy one token for $0.011. Imagine if you could have bought Bitcoin at these prices. You can buy BTCMTX with ETH or USDT on the Ethereum network and start staking right away.
The goal is to raise $3,080,000 and the coin has already raised over $100,000 in a few days after launching the presale.
The BTCMTX will have a total supply of 4 billion tokens, 42.5% of which will be used to fund the Bitcoin mining operations.
There are four phases outlined in BTCMTX whitepaper where the token listing on CEX is planed for phase two after the end of the presale. Phase three is where the token burning mechanics will go live.
To learn more about this project and to get updates, make sure to follow BTCMTX on X and on the BTCMTX Telegram.
| Cryptocurrency | Bitcoin Minetrix (BTCMTX) |
| Presale price | $0.011 |
| How to buy | ETH, BNB, USDT |
| Total token supply | 4 billion |
| Presale tokens | 1.7 billion |
| Can you stake during presale | Yes |
| When can I claim my presale tokens? | As soon as the presale ends and the token lists on the first exchange |
Is Solana Coin a Good Investment? Our Conclusion
Solana is probably one of the best investments in crypto right now because it has the lowest transaction fees and fastest transaction finality while being 92% below the all-time high price. With the Visa partnership, it becomes obvious that financial institutions are seeing Solana as the leading blockchain for settlements.
Alternatively, if you’re looking for an investment with the potential to 10x in 2023, consider the Bitcoin Minetrix presale. This is an upcoming cloud mining platform where you stake your tokens to earn Bitcoin mining credits. Sounds interesting? Learn more in the link below.
However, just as with any crypto investment, make sure you understand the risks and avoid scams and frauds to have a profitable journey.
References
- https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-basics/glossary/copy-trading
- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/18/how-did-crypto-firm-ftx-collapse
- https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/22/play-move-to-earn-solana-stepn-gamefi/
- https://www.binance.com/en/feed/post/1105734
- https://www.binance.com/en-NG/feed/post/1035901
- https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/09/13/cryptos-interest-in-rates/
- https://twitter.com/googlecloud/status/1588927875314499590?lang=en
- https://decrypt.co/155014/visa-faster-credit-card-payments-usdc-solana/
- https://github.com/metaplex-foundation/metaplex-program-library/tree/master/bubblegum
- https://www.helius.dev/blog/solana-nft-compression
- https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/26/crypto-wallet-phantom-adds-public-multichain-support-for-ethereum-and-polygon/
- https://defillama.com/chain/Solana
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF-7duYCK54
- https://u.today/ethereum-gas-skyrocketing-as-trader-paid-64-eth-in-fees-whats-happening
- https://usa.visa.com/solutions/crypto/deep-dive-on-solana.html
- https://docs.solana.com/validator/runtime
- https://docs.solana.com/history
- https://www.reuters.com/technology/solana-crypto-token-loses-most-its-value-2022-ftx-collapse-weighs-2022-12-28/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okM-ly0JqRA
- https://decrypt.co/126218/solana-saga-review-web3-smartphone-arrived
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAO1DF3vZlk
