Original author: ChandlerZ, Foresight News
Driven by the craze of Trumps official release of the meme coin TRUMP, Solana (SOL) started a rapid rise late at night on January 18, breaking through $270. The increase in the past 24 hours was as high as 23.02%, setting a new historical high.
After breaking through the high point and completing the delivery action, SOL fell 6.46% in nearly 13 minutes, and the lowest intraday price once reached 242.5 USDT. As of press time, SOL is currently quoted at US$255.26, ranking fifth in the world in terms of market value, with a market value of US$124.6 billion.
At the same time, Ethereum continues to show weakness. Since the current bull market, Ethereums performance has continued to be sluggish. Although it has rebounded to $3,525 recently, it has failed to break through further. Instead, it has led the decline to $3,225 and is currently reported at $3,348.8.
According to Trading View data, the SOL/ETH exchange rate briefly broke through 0.08178 at night, setting a new all-time high and is now trading at 0.07634.
Trumps TRUMP coin attracted all the enthusiasm of the market and almost sucked blood from the entire market, but Solana rose against the trend in this environment and continued to widen the gap with Ethereum.
According to on-chain analyst Embers monitoring, perhaps affected by the surge in TRUMP and SOL, multiple whales sold ETH on January 18: @Christianeth transferred 8,161.7 ETH (US$26.59 million) to Binance in the past hour, and stated that it had exchanged a quarter of its on-chain assets for SOL; @0x Vladilena transferred 5,018 ETH (US$16.36 million) to Binance 2 hours ago; 0x e 43...bd 7 address sold 5,000 we ETH on the chain for 17.25 million USDC 3 hours ago.
The public chain is rising
TRUMP has attracted widespread attention in the market and has caused a violent reaction on multiple crypto trading platforms. Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX, commented on social media X that Trumps launch of the TRUMP token marks the opening of the political Memecoin market, and any politician who dares to understand public opinion in real time may issue his own meme token. Although the economics of these tokens may become chaotic, the market value of the TRUMP token has the potential to reach $100 billion.
Binance then announced that it would launch the TRUMP U-based perpetual contract at 21:00 on January 18, with a maximum leverage of 25 times. Due to the excessive popularity of TRUMP tokens, related exchanges and blockchain networks have encountered great pressure.
Binance temporarily suspended SOL withdrawals, and the withdrawal channels of the Solana network and BNB Chain were also temporarily closed. Bithumb also issued an announcement stating that due to the sharp increase in Solana withdrawals, withdrawals require extra time to process.
Market maker Wintermute said that TRUMP tokens are now available for trading on Wintermute’s OTC trading desk. Early on-chain analysis showed that Wintermute is suspected to be the largest holding address of TRUMP, which indicates that Wintermute may have previously cooperated with the TRUMP token project to provide market making services.
From the perspective of market performance, the successful issuance of TRUMP tokens in the Solana ecosystem has produced a significant Matthew effect. The $400 million in trading volume and more than 400,000 new users created by the Moonshot platform in just 12 hours have confirmed Solanas advantages in user experience and transaction efficiency, and more importantly, have strengthened the markets recognition of it as the preferred issuance platform for emerging tokens. This increase in recognition is forming a virtuous circle, attracting more project parties to choose Solana as their issuance platform.
DefiLlama data shows that in the past 24 hours, the DEX transaction volume on the Solana chain exceeded US$16 billion (currently US$16.482 billion), exceeding the total of all other chains, accounting for 57.7%.
Ethereum’s Dilemma
At the same time, the Ethereum ecosystem is facing a critical period of governance structure adjustment. The Ethereum Foundation has sold a total of 4,466 ETH (about $12.6 million) in 32 transactions in the past year, 15 of which were sold at the highest point in a short period of time.
Community members, especially long-term holders, may question whether the foundation has the ability to stabilize the market, which in turn affects the long-term confidence of the market and the behavior of coin holders. So much so that Marc Zeller, the founder of the Aave Chan Initiative (ACI), the Aave contribution team, wrote that to solve the problems of the Ethereum Foundation, it is necessary to immediately fire 80% of non-developers and current leaders, cut 95% of current subsidies, stop selling ETH, and use LST to borrow stablecoins through Sky/Aave, while reducing operating expenses, etc.
On January 19, Vitalik Buterin revealed in a public post that the Ethereum Foundation is making major changes to its leadership structure, which has been going on for about a year. Some of these reforms have been implemented and made public, while others are still in progress.
The goals that EF will strive to achieve include: improving the level of technical expertise of the leadership; improving two-way communication and connection between the leadership and ecosystem participants (new and old). EFs responsibility is to support users (individuals and institutions), developers, wallets, and L2; introducing new talents and improving execution capabilities and speed; more actively supporting application builders and ensuring that important values and inalienable rights (especially privacy, open source, and anti-censorship) exist for users (including the application layer); continue to increase the use of decentralized and privacy technologies and the Ethereum chain, including for payments and fund management.
From a deeper perspective, the choice of Solana over Ethereum as the issuance platform for TRUMP tokens is not just a technical consideration, but also reflects a subtle change in market forces. Considering Trump’s previous association with World Liberty Finance based on Ethereum, this choice may hint at a broader shift in market trends.
Trump breaks record with $30 billion in quick succession, and all companies are making huge profits
On the morning of January 18, Trump announced the launch of his personal meme coin TRUMP on his Truth Social social account. Users can obtain the token by visiting the GetTrumpMemes official website. TRUMPs performance after its launch was extremely strong. In less than 30 minutes after the opening, its market value reached about $700 million. After that, Trump retweeted the news on Twitter, and TRUMPs market value soared, quickly breaking through the $10 billion and $20 billion mark.
At 11 p.m. on the 18th, Trumps eldest son Eric Trump tweeted to confirm TRUMPs legitimacy, quoting the words of crypto czar David Sacks: The reign of terror against cryptocurrencies is over, and the beginning of American cryptocurrency innovation has just begun. He also mentioned Bitcoin, the family project World Liberty Financial, and the new official meme project TRUMP. Influenced by the news, the price of TRUMP broke through $34, and its market value once exceeded $30 billion.
Arkham Intelligence analysis said that assuming CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight LLC actually belong to Trump, his net worth increased by $22 billion overnight. Moreover, at the current price of about $28, these shares are worth $22.4 billion. Forbes estimates that the net worth of the president-elect in November 2024 is $5.6 billion.
According to on-chain data monitoring, the Trump teams token holdings have continued to decrease since the issuance of the TRUMP token. Some of them are provided as unilateral liquidity pools, and some are transferred to CEX or used for market making. In the past 17 hours, the TRUMP team address deposited $20 million worth of tokens to Bybit, which may be used for market making.
Crypto KOL Conor said, It seems that every token in circulation has either been sold to the market or provided as one-sided liquidity. But according to Arkham analysis, the Trump team did not sell $500 million of TRUMP. It pointed out that the team holds about $500 million in TRUMP liquidity pools on the chain, and they have taken out a total of $20 million (as USDC) from these pools. In addition, the team appears to have sent $92 million of TRUMP to CEX.
Interestingly, the launch was timed to coincide with Trump’s celebration of his return to the White House at the first-ever Crypto Ball in Washington, D.C. The event brought together crypto industry OGs like MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Gemini’s Winklevoss twins, and Trump’s crypto and AI advisor David Sacks, as well as politicians, several of Trump’s new cabinet members, and his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
According to Fox, after the news of the token issuance broke, some attendees were skeptical, speculating that the president-elects account had been hacked. Trumps eldest son may have known the news, and he was in an exclusive VIP area. It is unclear whether he talked about the TRUMP token with anyone there.
According to Bubblemaps analysis, the smart money at address 6 QSc 2 received funds 4 hours before the release of the TRUMP token and purchased $1 million in the first minute, with a floating profit of nearly $116 million. The address then transferred all TRUMP and distributed it to 10 addresses for sale in batches. They have currently sold tokens worth $20 million and still hold tokens worth $96 million.
In general, the launch of the TRUMP token has brought short-term market attention and traffic to Solana, but there is still uncertainty as to whether it can maintain long-term market popularity. From a market perspective, whether TRUMP can maintain a price above $20, whether Solanas network effect can continue, and whether Solana can achieve breakthroughs in broader institutional adoption and deposit volume will be key factors in determining whether the Solana ecosystem can continue to expand. If Solana can gain greater recognition among institutional investors, this will likely further increase the price of SOL and strengthen the market share of the Solana ecosystem.
