As the crypto market collapses in the wake of FTX’s demise, the price of the once-rival to Ethereum has fallen.
According to Coingecko, the market capitalization of the popular proof-of-stake blockchain, Solana, has fallen below that of the original proof-of-work blockchain, Litecoin.
Once nicknamed the “Ethereum Killer,” Solana’s SOL token started trading in January 2022 at $178.89, with a market valuation of $55.09 billion. Then came crypto winter, the merging that saw Ethereum, once a proof-of-work blockchain, move to proof-of-stake, and the aftermath of the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Currently, SOL is trading at $11.91 with a market worth of $4.32 billion, a decrease of 94.9% year-over-year.
Litecoin will be delisted from Bithumb and Upbit, two South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges, as a result of adjustments made to the coin that increase transaction privacy.
Solana is a proof-of-stake layer-1 blockchain that enables the creation of decentralized applications (dapps) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) by developers.
In comparison, Litecoin started trading in 2022 at $151.09 with a market value of $10.47 billion. On November 22, 2022, Litecoin is trading at $69.36 with a market worth of $4.97 billion, representing a decrease of 69.1%.
The most recent decline of Solana started with the demise of FTX. On November 14, days after FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the focus shifted to the Solana Foundation’s exposure to the failing exchange, which included around $1 million in cash and cash equivalents on FTX.com as of November 6, when FTX.com began processing withdrawals.
According to Forbes and the Financial Times, FTX had a significant quantity of SOL at the time of its collapse: $982 million worth of SOL on November 10.
Austin Federa, Solana Foundation’s director of communications, told Decrypt, “We do not know how many SOL customers used FTX.” “However, the Foundation had less than $1 million invested in FTX, while Solana Labs had nothing.”
FTX, along with its founder and previous CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has a longstanding relationship with Solana, having participated in Solana Labs’ $314 million financing via Alameda Research.
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