Solana's explosion continues as SOL crosses $120, +100% in December: Should we fear profit-taking?

While many cryptocurrencies have stabilized in recent days, with Bitcoin posting a gain limited to 1.8% over a week at the time of writing, Solana (SOL) has largely extended its gains, including yesterday for Christmas Day.

Trading at $120 at the time of writing, the SOL is indeed up nearly 9% over 24 hours, and nearly 60% over a week, and yesterday marked a high at $126, the highest since April 2022.

Why has Solana doubled in value since the beginning of the month?
In addition, Solana has now more than doubled in value compared to the beginning of the month. And as for the performance of the SOL since the beginning of the current uptrend, in the middle of October, it reaches more than +470%.

This impressive rise has allowed Solana to rise to 4th place in the ranking of the largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, after surpassing BNB last weekend, and XRP the week before.

It should be noted that this meteoric rise in the SOL is partly due to the general positive trend in the cryptocurrency market due to two key factors: the prospect of the Fed cutting rates in early 2024, and the hope of SEC approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs, an event also expected in early January.

However, it remains unclear why the crypto rally has resulted in far larger gains on Solana than on its peers. However, some experts have pointed to the success of some Solana-based meme coins, including BONK, as well as the airdrop appeal of some DeFi protocols, also based on SOL, to explain the outperformance.