Bitcoin hits all-time high while Solana holds steady
May 21, 2025
Solana’s focus remains on fundamentals: stable usage, high yields, and expanding infrastructure
by Jeff Albus /
May 21, 2025 04:31 pm
nuddss/Shutterstock and Adobe modified by Blockworks
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Keep your hands and arms inside the rocket ship for the duration of our flight, ladies and gents.
Bitcoin surged to a new all-time high of $109,400 today, just nine days after the US and China reached a 90-day trade truce, cooling off global jitters. That’s a rather major macro signal, yeah?
The sort of crypto bellwether that deserves front-row attention, especially because SOL has held steady across a choppy weekly chart instead of ripping in tandem. That says something about current flows and investor focus, methinks.
Solana’s price is essentially unchanged on the week, sitting at $167.34 (-0.3%) with a volatile but range-bound seven-day chart.
BTC’s breakout, meanwhile, caps a pretty remarkable macro pivot. Just six weeks ago, reciprocal tariff threats from el presidente de los Estados Unidos rattled the US equity markets. Now, with a temporary trade deal in effect, traditional markets are stabilizing and capital is flowing back into high-beta assets.
Bitcoin, the ultimate crypto liquidity sponge, has responded promptly, pushing past its December 2024 highs to confirm a fresh leg higher. But while the biggest of dogs rallies on macro clarity, Solana’s setup remains more idiosyncratic.
The network remains a hive of activity, with daily active addresses rebounding above five million, and over 30,000 new tokens launching per day. DEX volumes remain anchored by serious flows, with SOL-USDC still the top traded pair and Raydium and Jupiter handling the bulk of liquidity.
Meanwhile, liquid staking tokens like mSOL and jitoSOL continue gaining TVL, and reverted transactions (failed txs) — often seen as noise — are increasingly concentrated among mid-sized wallets. To my eyes, though, that’s a decent sign of rising speculative experimentation rather than any dysfunction.
Staking yields on Solana remain high (7.82% APY), and over 65% of the supply is staked, including almost $2 billion through Marinade. And don’t forget to toss in that we’re looking at around $5 billion weekly DEX volume, immaculate stablecoin transfer strength and progress within the network’s ever-maturing validator ecosystem.
What I’m getting at is that Solana seems to be consolidating a different kind of high: regulatory progress, institutional trust and infrastructural maturity. Will the price of SOL have its turn? Sure. Probably. Something something, altseason. Don’t quote me.
But for now, the network continues to sugar ball its metrics, waiting its turn, with eyes mostly on BTC’s next move to $120,000 (Please? Thanks) and beyond.
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