On January 18, the cryptocurrency Solana (SOL) reached a new all-time high, climbing to around $270. Over the past week, its value increased by 45%.
The asset surpassed its previous record set in November 2024, when it peaked at $254.
A major driver of this growth was the launch of the “official” meme token TRUMP by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on the Solana blockchain. Within a day, the token’s price surged to $39, with a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of $39.7 billion.
According to DeFi Llama, the hype around the token pushed trading volumes on decentralized exchanges within the Solana network to $19 billion per day — nearly five times higher than the year-to-date average.
Solana outpaced all other blockchains combined in trading volume, capturing a dominant 52% share of the DEX market.
However, former Google developer, known as TechLead, pointed out that the TRUMP token shouldn’t have significantly boosted the price of SOL. He explained that the liquidity for TRUMP is primarily paired with USDC, meaning the demand for SOL remains relatively modest due to the network’s low transaction fees.
