SOL on a roll: Meme mania, ETF hopes power Solana toward $500

Solana rallied after bottoming at $94.50 in April as demand for its token and meme coins jumped. 

Solana (SOL) rose to $170 at last check on Saturday and is now hovering at its highest level since March 3 this year. 

The rally has coincided with the ongoing crypto and stock market bull run. Bitcoin and most altcoins have jumped, bringing the market cap of all cryptocurrencies to over $3.2 trillion. 

Most Solana meme coins have also jumped in the past few weeks, pushing their market cap from $6 billion in April to $13 billion today. Some of the top performers were Bonk (BONK), Dogwifhat (WIF), Popcat (POPCAT), and Peanut the Squirrel.

This growth has also been translated to the performance of its Decentralized Exchanges. The volume processed by protocols in the network, like Raydium and Meteora, rose to $20 billion in the last seven days and $78.93 billion in the last 30 days.

This is a big increase compared to Ethereum’s protocols, which handled $13 billion and $51.5 billion in this period. 

Solana price will also benefit from the upcoming approval of spot cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds. 7 firms like VanEck, 21Shares, Grayscale, and Bitwise have applied for a spot SOL ETF. If the SEC allows staking, JPMorgan estimates that these funds will attract over $6 billion in inflows in the first year.

Solana price analysis: textbook pattern points to a surge to $500

The weekly chart shows that the SOL price has formed a classical chart pattern known as a cup and handle. This pattern is characterized by a horizontal resistance, a rounded bottom, and a handle section. 

This pattern’s upper section was $258, while the lower side was $8.05. It is now forming the handle section of this pattern. 

The best way to approximate the price target using this pattern is to measure the cup’s depth, which is at 97% in this case. One then measures the same distance from the cup’s upper side, bringing the target to about $500.

The bullish Solana price forecast will become invalid if the coin drops below the key support at $94.50.