A strong 18% surge in the price of Solana (SOL) over the past 24 hours has boosted the cryptocurrency to the fourth spot in market capitalization — the first time it’s done so in over two years.
The latest surge has led to Solana’s market cap to reach $41.9 billion, flipping that of Binance Chain’s BNB (BNB)’s now $41.8 billion. SOL is currently priced at $98.40, up 18% on the day.
SOLANA FLIPPED BNB pic.twitter.com/ISdrnGfoTb
— borovik.eth (@3orovik) December 22, 2023
Only a day earlier, on Dec. 21, Solana had surpassed XRP (XRP) in market capitalization.
It comes as SOL has made more than 30% gains over the past week, outperforming all other major cryptocurrencies in the same timeframe.
However, despite the “ETH killer” moniker many of its supporters tout, Solana has a long way to go to catch up to Ethereum’s market cap of $269 billion.
The last time Solana was in fourth place was in November 2021, according to CoinMarketCap. Back then, at the peak of the bull market cycle, it had a market cap of $75 billion but was still behind BNB, which had $108 billion.
However, he price of Solana closed at the end of 2022 at just below $10, mainly due to its association with the defunct FTX exchange and former crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried. A year later, SOL has now surged to almost $100, making it one of the year’s best-performing crypto assets.
Google Trends also shows a strong increase in searches for Solana, which has almost closed in on searches for Ethereum, at least in the United States.
Related: Solana (SOL) market cap flips XRP — What’s behind the price surge?
However, technical analysts have also warned of a potential major crash before the year ends.
On Dec. 21, the Solana team looked back on the year in its “Solana Solstice” celebration and annual review of events, which included BONK hype, the launch of the Saga mobile device, AI integration, and institutional partnerships.
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