Solana whales have sold their tokens to cash in on gains from a staking play that started four years ago. They have sold nearly $50 million of recently unlocked tokens.
According to reports, four whales staked 1.79 million Solana coins in April 2021. These tokens were worth about $37.7 million at the time. It was “the largest single-day unlock of staked SOL” on April 4. The company said that the next unlock like this won’t happen until 2028.
The tokens were worth about $206 million when they were unlocked, which is a 446% increase from when they were first staked. In other words, their holdings have grown by 5.5 times at these prices. This makes them more likely to sell and make money.
The whales have sold over 400,000 Solana
Onchain Lens, a blockchain analytics tool, said that 425,266 Solana, worth about $49.78 million, had been unstaked. Soon after, 284,147 SOLs were moved to major platforms like Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance, which could mean that selling would start soon.
About $16 million worth of three other wallets sold their SOL tokens. However, based on information from Arkham, the four wallets still have about 1.38 million SOL tokens, which are worth about $160 million.
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Meme coins still dominated 92% of Solana DEX volume in the past month
The SOL unlock comes after the price of SOL tokens has dropped significantly since April 2.
CoinGecko records that SOL reached a high point of $131.11 on April 2. Solana was worth $116.51 at the time of this writing.
The market as a whole has been putting pressure on Solana. SOL has dropped 10% in the last week. Prices dropped for a short time to $112.24, hitting a key support level from the past 12 months.
As bad as the prices seem, Solana has been hosting memcoins and new projects well. An almost two times rise in Solana’s total value locked since November 2024, to over 53 million SOL, shows that investors are confident in the long term. On-chain data shows that stablecoin action on Solana has also gone up, from $5 billion in January to $12.6 billion in March.
However, activity in decentralized banking has slowed down. In January, the volume on decentralized markets was $252 billion. In March, it was only $52 billion. The technical picture for Solana shows a neutral to bullish direction.
This is not a first for Solana. Apparently, the unstaking event by four “whale wallets” comes after another big unlock by Alameda Research and the now-bankrupt crypto market FTX.
FTX and Alameda wallets took out more than 3 million Solana tokens, which are worth $431 million, on March 4. With this event, FTX unlocked the most SOL tokens since it began selling them in November 2023.
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The analysis tool Spot On Chain shows that the now-bankrupt crypto exchange has released 7.83 million SOL tokens since November 2023.
At a price of $125.80 per SOL, the assets were sold for $986 million.
Paypal has included Solana in its offerings
PayPal Holdings, Inc. announced today that users of PayPal and Venmo can now buy, hold, sell, and transfer Solana.
May Zabaneh, Vice President of Product, Blockchain, Crypto, and Digital Currencies at PayPal, said, “Since we initially made cryptocurrencies available on PayPal and Venmo, we’ve been listening to our users about what they want to do with crypto on our platforms. One piece of feedback we’ve heard is to make additional tokens available that align with our mission of revolutionizing payments.”
May Zabaneh added that offering more tokens on PayPal and Venmo provides users with greater flexibility, choice, and access to digital currencies. This allows for more options to buy, send or spend within our trusted PayPal and Venmo wallets. Sol is now up 2.5% in the last 24 hours.
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