The Solana dump looks far from over as whales continue offloading their SOL holdings during this market downtrend. The recent shakeup in the crypto space might have also contributed to these whales’ bearish sentiment towards Solana.
Crypto Whale Offloads $16 Million Worth Of Solana
In an X (formerly Twitter) post, the on-chain analytics platform Lookonchain drew the crypto community’s attention to a whale who has sold 114,300 SOL ($16 million) on Binance and OKX since August 4. This whale’s most recent sale came on August 20, when they sold 10,000 SOL ($1.41 million).
NewsBTC previously reported about a crypto whale that sold $86 million worth of Solana this year. This particular whale is also back in action, as on-chain data shows that they recently sold 20,000 SOL ($2.9 million). That brings this whale’s total Solana sale to 614,000 SOL ($89 million) since January 15.
Although the reason for these recent sales remains unknown, they could be related to the bearish sentiment in the Solana ecosystem. With its once vibrant meme coin ecosystem being threatened by other networks like Tron and Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Solana’s decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume is declining, a metric that could ultimately affect its price.
Data from DeFiLlama shows that Solana’s DEX volume has dropped by over 20% in the last seven days. Meanwhile, Tron and BSC’s trading volumes are up by over 436% and 15%, respectively. This development is already weighing on Solana, as SOL’s price has remained tepid. Data from CoinMarketCap shows that Solana is one of the few cryptos in the top 20 crypto by market cap not to have recorded a gain in the last seven days.
Another reason for the recent bearish outlook on Solana is reports that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had rejected the Chicago Board Options Exchange’s (CBOE) 19b-4 filings for the Spot Solana ETFs. The Commission is still said to be adamant that Solana is a security.
Some Whales Remain Undeterred
Despite the bearish outlook on Solana, some crypto whales remain undeterred and have seen this as an opportunity to accumulate more SOL. Two whales, in particular, recently invested millions of dollars in the crypto token—the first whale (9tuA8L) withdrew 30,000 SOL ($4.25 million from Binance and staked these tokens on August 21.
Meanwhile, the second whale (7CsCGy) also withdrew 26,245 $SOL ($3.72M) from Binance and staked these tokens on August 21. This move could undoubtedly be profitable, especially if Solana’s fundamentals pick up again. Crypto analysts like Ali Martinez had previously predicted that SOL could reach $1,000 in this bull run.
At the time of writing, Solana is trading at around $142, down in the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.