The Solana price has dropped by 5% today, with its move down to $183 coming after the market learned that $2.2 billion in SOL will unlock on March 1.
The Solana in question is part of the estate of defunct exchange FTX, and it represents the biggest unlock in four years, with the total quantity of SOL amounting to 2.3% of the coin’s total supply.
This news finds the Solana price also down by 10% in a week and 25% in the past month, with the alt keeping a 68% increase in the past year.
Yet it’s likely that we won’t see it return to growth until after the unlock happens at the start of next month, with its long-term price prediction continuing to look good.
Solana Price Slips – Could Upcoming Unlocks Send SOL Below $50?
The unlock date has been public information for a while now, but with the day fast approaching, traders have been sharing it more frequently.
The upcoming unlock represents almost the entirety of FTX’s estate, with only 61,853 SOL remaining in its coffers after March 1.
That said, previous FTX unlocks have been releasing SOL on a monthly basis, with the final FTX-related release not happening until January 2028.
This could continue to undermine the Solana price for some time to come, although it’s also worth remembering that asset managers such as Galaxy Digital and Pantera are the main buyers of the due-to-be-unlocked SOL.
What this implies is that they may choose to hold their funds for the longer term, as opposed to dumping as soon as possible.
Either way, the unlock has spooked the market, with SOL’s chart today showing a big decline in momentum.
Its indicators have been plunging over the past couple of days, yet one piece of good news is that they may have bottomed already.
Its RSI (purple) has dropped below 30 and has just begun bouncing up, although its 30-period average (orange) is still dropping lower.
Source: TradingView
In the near term, we may see the Solana price make a modest recovery in the next few days, before struggling to regain its January highs.
But once the dust has settled on the March 1 unlock, it could begin recovering in a more concerted way, returning to $250 by the end of Q2.
Solana Prepares for Launch of First Ever L2 Network
While Solana will recover once the unlock plays out, many traders may prefer to look to newer alternatives in the meantime, with one coin in particular likely to interest SOL holders.
This is Solaxy (SOLX), Solana’s first fully fledged layer-two network.
It opened the presale for its native SOLX token at the end of last year, and has already raised an impressive $21.7 million.
SOLX presale has done so well because of Solaxy’s very bullish fundamentals, on the one hand, and because it will provide genuine utility within the Solaxy ecosystem, on the other.
The Solaxy network will enable Solana users to avoid failed transactions, outages and congestion, which can still affect Solana during peak periods, even after recent upgrades.
https://x.com/SOLAXYTOKEN/status/1890614943202034152
And because SOLX will be necessary to pay for Solaxy’s transaction fees, it will experience strong demand, rising in parallel with Solaxy’s growth.
This helps to explain why SOLX’s presale has become one of the biggest of the past few months, although there isn’t much time left if new investors want to join.
They can do so by visiting the official Solaxy website, where they can buy SOLX using ETH, USDT or fiat for a price of $0.001638.
This price will continue to rise every few days until the sale ends, so traders should act sooner rather than later.
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