Solana's SOL Plunges 50% Amid Crypto Rout and Libra Scandal

Solana's native token, SOL, has plummeted to its lowest price of the year, dropping over 50% from its January peak. The decline comes amid a broader crypto market swoon and concerns surrounding the Solana network's involvement in a scandal involving the Libra meme token.

SOL fell to $132 on Tuesday, its lowest point since October, before rebounding slightly. As of this writing, the token is down about 5% over the past 24 hours, trading at a current price of $144. Solana's price hit $293 in early January.

The decline of the sixth-largest digital asset by market value has accelerated over the past 11 days following the Libra token's dramatic loss of value. The token, issued on the Solana platform, lost about 90% of its value in hours, sparking accusations of fraud and calls for the impeachment of Argentine President Javier Milei.

Milei had promoted the token on X, claiming it would help the country's small businesses. He subsequently deleted the post and denied knowledge about the details behind the coin's creation.

Solana decentralized exchange trading volumes dropped to a five-week low of $2.61 billion last week, as meme coin trading—a top driver of activity on the network—dipped amid a series of rug pulls and other scandals, cooling interest in the tokens.

Despite the price plummet, multiple fund issuers have filed applications based on SOL's spot price. The SEC has received proposals from Franklin Templeton Grayscale, Bitwise, Canary, 21Shares, and VanEck. Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas has penciled in a 70% probability that the SEC will approve the ETFs.

The Solana network's native token dropped amid a broader slump in the digital assets market. Bitcoin dipped to nearly $86,000 at one point Tuesday, well below its all-time high above $108,000. Ethereum, Dogecoin, and XRP had all fallen sharply as of this morning, as investors spooked by a potential trade war, rising inflation, and global political unrest have retreated from crypto and other risk-on assets. Top coins have broadly started to recover some ground in recent hours, with those assets each