The coin that fell 96% after another one went bankrupt... and returned to its all-time high
Some coins die because of their own mistakes. This one almost died because another one collapsed—and came back.
Solana was born in March 2020 and started out worth around 50 cents. It was marketed as a rival to Ethereum: faster and with rock-bottom fees. In 2021, during the bull market, more and more developers were building apps and NFT projects on it, and on November 6, 2021, it reached nearly $260.
But there was one uncomfortable detail. Solana was closely tied to FTX and its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried (story #13 in this series), who supported it from the beginning. When FTX collapsed in November 2022, Solana was the hardest-hit major coin, precisely because of that close association.
The price kept falling. In late December 2022, SOL dropped below $10 for the first time in nearly two years and came close to $8. Compared with its all-time high, that was a drop of nearly 96%. That same month, two of its most famous NFT projects announced they were moving to other networks. Some builders spoke of an existential crisis. The network also had a history of technical outages, with periods of downtime that had eroded confidence.
Almost everyone had written it off. And then something nobody expected happened: Solana shook off its association with FTX, kept building, and attracted new projects. As the market recovered, it began climbing without pause. In November 2024, two years after hitting bottom, it finally surpassed its previous high of $260, after increasing in value more than 30 times from its low.
The most remarkable thing is how quickly perceptions change in crypto: in 2022, people said Solana was a dead project to stay away from, and two years later it was at all-time highs.
And it leaves us with a thought: whether a project survives depends less on its price and more on whether people keep building on it, even when nobody is watching.
Would you have written Solana off in December 2022? Answer Yes or No.
That wraps up week 13. Follow me so you don't miss week 14.
“This is not financial advice”