Solana witnessed a massive decline in market cap, but here’s the catch

• Solana, in the past year, has seen over $40 billion wiped out of its market cap.
• The alt has rallied by almost 60% in the past few days, but not enough to stem its bleeding market cap.

Solana’s [SOL] community has gone “BONKers” since the release of its very own dog-themed cryptocurrency token. As a result, its social mentions have flared, which has given some holders the hope that it may help start a rally for SOL. Despite the ongoing excitement, how much value has been lost since SOL’s downward trend began? 

Read Solana’s [SOL] Price Prediction 2023-24

Solana market cap nose-dives

According to data obtained by CoinMarketCap, the downward trend in pricing had effectively wiped off more than $47 billion worth of the cryptocurrency’s market cap over the past year.

After the collapse of FTX and the disclosure of the volume held by the now-defunct Alameda, Solana’s downward trend became even more pronounced. As a point of reference, Solana’s market cap was approximately $52 billion at the beginning of 2022, but it has since decreased to over $4.5 billion as of this writing.

In the early stages of its development, Solana was hailed as a potential rival to Ethereum [ETH], and comparisons were drawn between the transaction per second (TPS) rate of the two.

However, a closer examination of the market capitalization of both networks revealed how much further apart they have become, particularly considering the current bear market. 

According to information obtained from CoinMarketCap, Solana’s market cap was $52.6 billion a year ago. Since then, it has shrunk 11 times to its press time value of $4.7 billion. When compared, Ethereum’s market cap decreased by only three times over the same timeframe, which meant that Solana’s market cap was now only 3.1% of Ethereum’s $148 billion market size.

Price rallies, but it is not enough

Using the price range tool, it was possible to discover, on a daily timeframe, that SOL had lost almost 77% of its value – which is equivalent to over $27 – between November 2022 and 29 December 2023. SOL showed a loss of over 1% throughout the monitored trading period and was trading at roughly $13.2 at the time of this writing.

On the other hand, the start of a new year brought good fortune in the form of a gain of almost sixty percent from the lowest point it had reached in the previous year.

Are your holdings flashing green? Check the SOL Profit Calculator

High hopes with BONK?

When FTX failed, it was a major setback for Solana, and the network has been fighting an uphill battle ever since. Although the BONK token may have injected some much-needed adrenaline into the floundering Solana, it is realistic to assume that its impact will be little.