One crypto favored by Sam Bankman-Fried has seen remarkable success despite his fall, as institutional investment drives the price this year.
NOV 14, 2023 9:34 AM EST
Even after its founder Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty on multiple counts of fraud, bringing him close to a life sentence in prison, FTX crypto exchange remains an influential force in the markets.
In his time at the helm of FTX, Bankman-Fried was a proponent of Solana, pouring millions into its decentralized ecosystem and even building a high-speed derivatives exchange for the blockchain network named Serum. But as the exchange moves forward with bankruptcy proceedings, it is liquidating many of its holdings, including SOL.
"Solana's price fell by around 7% during the last 24 hours after bankrupt FTX transferred 250,000 SOL tokens, worth approximately $14 million, to the Kraken crypto exchange," per Cryptoslate. "The bankrupt crypto firm has rapidly divested its crypto holdings, moving more than $300 million worth of assets."
The move may have caused a price dip yesterday, but Solana had been enjoying some momentum in recent days. In November 2022, its market cap was around $5 billion. Today, it has risen to more than $24 billion. The crypto network recently overtook Ethereum in number of daily users. And recent CoinGlass data highlighted that Grayscale's Solana trust product GSOL is enjoying a premium rate of 630% across $6.78 million total holdings, or 115,900 total tokens. Last Friday, Solana’s price jumped 20% and Grayscale's Solana Trust was one of the main beneficiaries. Overall, institutions are eyeing crypto markets with greater interest with the upcoming bitcoin halving in 2024, and rumors that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is likely to approve several applications for a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) soon. The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, is among those seeking an approval, and crypto markets have recently seen $767 million of net inflows, the highest number since 2021. A former BlackRock manager also said that $200 billion could enter bitcoin markets if a spot bitcoin ETF was approved, and predicted the timeline could be as little as three months from now.
"In the past, consumers and businesses have been nervous about using bitcoin. The upcoming launch of spot bitcoin ETFs will boost market confidence by validating the long-term potential of bitcoin," David Bailey, Chief Marketing Officer of Azteco, creator of the world's first bitcoin gift card, told TheStreet Crypto.
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