Why Has The Solana Price Been In A Steady Downtrend Since January?

Solana’s worth motion this yr has adopted a transparent however uncomfortable sample. After pushing to a brand new all-time high across the $296 area in January, the rally rapidly misplaced momentum and transitioned into a steady decline that has persevered for months. 

Many merchants have attributed this weak point to a risk-off sentiment across crypto, however a deeper on-chain breakdown shared by crypto analyst Ardi on X suggests the story started effectively earlier than the January peak and has extra to do with who was shopping for and who was quietly exiting.

Distribution Was Already Underway Before The January Peak

Solana has been on a transparent downtrend since September, when it reached a decrease high of round $247 in comparison with its January 19 all-time high of $293. One of crucial insights from Ardi’s analysis is that Solana’s January all-time high didn’t mark the beginning of distribution however fairly the end result of it. 

The chart connected to his put up exhibits that promoting quantity was already rising months earlier, effectively forward of October, that means that enormous holders had been positioning for exits lengthy earlier than worth reached its remaining peak. From that perspective, the January high seems to be much less like the start of a brand new growth part and extra just like the final push of a rally. 

After that time, worth motion started forming decrease highs, and every rebound try lacked the energy wanted to reclaim the all-time high. Interestingly, Solana failed to achieve a brand new all-time high, at the same time as different giant market cap cryptos like Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and BNB pushed to new all-time highs in the course of the yr.

Another attention-grabbing function of the info is the widening hole between retail conduct and that of bigger gamers. Cumulative delta metrics on the chart present that retail-sized wallets have been constantly lively all year long and are rising their exercise at the same time as Solana’s worth moved decrease.

On the opposite hand, mid-sized and institutional wallets inform a really totally different story. Their exercise has been trending downward for months, ranging from the January peak and lengthening up till the time of writing.

Is Solana’s Price Becoming Dependent On Memecoin Activity?

Ardi’s evaluation additionally raises a broader query about what’s at the moment driving demand for Solana. Outside of retail exercise on Solana itself, one of many few constant sources of exercise has been the memecoin sector. Successes and booms of meme cash like Cat in a Dogs World (MEW), Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT), and Fartcoin (FARTCOIN), which gained traction within the second half of 2024, contributed to Solana’s push to all-time highs throughout these durations.

Those meme coin successes culminated with the launch of the Official Trump ($TRUMP) token in January 2025 on Solana, which skilled eye-watering positive factors shortly after its launch. This, in flip, contributed to Solana’s all-time high in January. 

However, since then, the TRUMP token and different Solana-based meme cash have been trending downwards in current months and now not command the identical stage of consideration or buying and selling depth they’d this time final yr. That has led to the view that Solana’s worth is more and more delicate to the success of memecoins in its ecosystem. 

At the time of writing, Solana is buying and selling at $121.50, down by about 58.6% from its January all-time high of $293.