Chris Curl,
Editor
Jan. 11, 2023
Last year was utterly brutal for the layer-1 blockchain Solana.
Touted as the “next big thing,” it managed to attract large VC investment as well as endorsements from celebrities ranging from Mike Tyson to Howie Mandel.
Much of this was due to its many advantages over reigning layer-1 protocol Ethereum. The vast majority of DeFi applications were built on Ethereum due to its first mover advantage. But scalability remained a major problem.
During the height of the crypto bull market in 2021, gas fees for a single transaction on the Ethereum network were often in excess of $300. Imagine having to pay that much to buy or sell a token or NFT!
Solana came along with speeds that dwarfed every competitor at 65,000 transactions per second (TPS). (For comparison, Ethereum could only handle around 20.)
Best of all, the average cost of a transaction on the Solana blockchain was just $0.00025. A far cry from $300!
Investors took notice, and the price of SOL (Solana’s native coin) rose from pennies to an all-time high of $260.06 in 2021.
One of Solana’s largest investors was the head of FTX and Alameda – the now infamous Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). He supported many projects on the network and even developed his own order book-based, non-custodial decentralized exchange (DEX) called Serum.
Much of the relative strength of the price of SOL was due to Alameda’s large holdings. When Alameda collapsed along with FTX in late 2022, massive amounts of SOL were liquidated, and investor sentiment plummeted, which caused the price of the coin to fall as low as $8.00.
At the time I was screaming “BUY!”
Even though closely connected, Solana does not depend on SBF or Alameda, and in the long run will be better off without them.
SOL quickly rebounded to over $17.00 a little over a week later.
Much of this was due to a new meme coin called Bonk Inu (BONK).
In an effort to save Solana and reward loyal network participants, an anonymous group of developers created a new token called Bonk Inu (BONK). They airdropped 50% of the initial 100 trillion tokens to active network participants.
I, personally, received over 500 million during the initial airdrop. This amount would later become worth over $2,000.
The price of BONK began exploding as members of the Solana community started pumping it on social media. Spotting the trend, I purchased some more and alerted readers of Crypto Cycle to purchase it as well. I even included a short instructional video showing them how.
BONK went up over 4,000% in 6 days.
All this is happening in the midst of a brutal bear market.
The token has since retraced considerably as is common after such explosive moves upward. But it all goes to show that there are always opportunities in the crypto space if one is diligent.
I’m keeping a close eye on the crypto market to see what similar opportunities lie ahead for 2023 and would love for you to join me.
You can see what three altcoins I’m buying now in the new report here.
Chris Curl
Editor, Daily Profit Cycle