Solana Flips Bitcoin, Ethereum In Weekend Trading Volume, As Price Rally Continues

Solana (SOL), the native cryptocurrency of the network of the same name, achieved a significant milestone over the weekend when it flipped two of the world's largest crypto assets by market capitalization -- Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) -- in terms of trading volume.

Solana has surpassed Binance Coin (BNB) and Ripple's XRP since Monday, and has continued to retain its spot as the fourth-largest crypto asset by market capitalization, based on the latest data from crypto aggregator CoinMarketCap.

But, during the past weekend, SOL captivated crypto traders' interest as its weekend trading volume on major centralized crypto exchange platforms crossed that of Bitcoin and Ethereum. This significant milestone was first shared by Coinbase director Conor Grogan last Sunday, noting that Solana had more trading volume versus combined trading volume of Bitcoin and Ether.

His observation was supported by Riyad Carey, an analyst at the market data provider Kaiko, who pointed out Solana's similar feat on Kraken and Gemini, two U.S.-based centralized crypto exchange platforms.

The same goes for UPbit and MEXC, which showed that Solana's trading volume surpassed BTC and ETH over the last couple of days.

But what's behind Solana's recent price rally, which contrasted previous speculations that it might stay at around $10, its price when the crypto empire co-founded by the disgraced crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, filed for bankruptcy?

Data from market data provider Kaiko revealed that Solana bounced back and thrived, noting that it "significantly outperformed" Ethereum, the world's second-largest crypto asset by market capitalization, as it moved from "a 0.01 price ratio to a 0.03 ratio," attributing these impressive gains in the last couple of months to the success of the two airdrops by PYTH and JTO.

Moreover, the Solana network saw a surge in activities, recording 15.6 million in December, underlining a 50% increase and surpassing the 15.2 million activities it listed in January.

Additionally, the Solana network hit a record-high number of 6.8 million addresses this month, which surpassed the 6.6 million addresses it saw in May.

SOL was trading in the green zone at $112.96 with a 24-hour trading volume up by 37.42% at $6,618,831,378 as of 5:37 a.m. ET on Tuesday.

Solana's latest price action represents 2.10% in the past 24 hours and a 50.70% gain in the last seven days.

Data from CoinMarketCap shows that Solana's currently circulating supply stands at 428,854,432 SOL and its market cap is at $48,443,992,591.