Today it was discovered that an FTX linked wallet transferred 250,000 Solana (SOL) to Binance in recent days.
This is $13.54 million at current exchange rates, and probably part of the program already authorized by the bankruptcy court to sell assets to monetize.
Solana’s (SOL) price and FTX sales
Over the past seven days, the price of SOL, or the cryptocurrency native to the Solana ecosystem, has risen 33%.
However, the peak of this growth was reached on Saturday 11 November, when it touched $64.5.
In the following days, the price slightly retraced, to the current $54.2.
It is possible that this retracement is due precisely to FTX-related sales.
However, it should not be forgotten that compared to the beginning of the year, the price of SOL has risen as much as 444%, with +147% concentrated in the last thirty days alone.
To understand this remarkable rise, however, one must put these movements in context.
The crash of 2022
The all-time high price was touched in November 2021 even above $260.
Since then, with the bursting of the speculative bubble, the price has fallen a lot. As early as late 2021 it was back to $170, continuing its descent to $80 in March.
With the implosion of the Terra/Luna ecosystem it plummeted to $50, then fell further in June to $30 after the Celsius bankruptcy.
With the FTX bankruptcy in November last year, it even fell to $12, hitting a low at $9.8 in late 2022. At that point the cumulative loss from the highs of the year before was more than 96%.
The year 2023 seemed to start well, though not great, with a return if anything to $26, only to fall back to $14 in June.
The real big rebound began only in mid-October, when from $22 it was back above $60 in less than a month.
Note that the current price is still 80% below the highs, however, despite +444% since the beginning of the year, and that the current approximately $54 is only slightly higher than the $48 of August 2022, and still below the $58 of mid-May last year.
FTX’s sales
FTX had many SOLs in its portfolio at the time of the bankruptcy in November last year.
It still held about $1 billion of them in September, and has been selling them for a few days now.
The point is that he is trying to monetize the assets he still has in his portfolio as much as possible so that he can raise the money to return to his creditors.
These repayments will be made in fiat currency, and perhaps it will be possible to receive cryptocurrencies back as well only once the fiat repayments are finished.
So it makes perfect sense that FTX is taking advantage of the recent boom in Solana’s price to sell the SOL tokens it still has in its portfolio.
After all, at the time of the November 2022 bankruptcy, even before the price collapse, SOL was worth about $33, while now it has risen well above $50.
Moreover, it should be noted that during 2023 until now Solana had never again risen above $33. This makes this an excellent time for FTX to sell its SOL tokens still in its portfolio, even if it is not selling all of them.
What’s more, it doesn’t even suit FTX to sell too many in too short a time, precisely to avoid a drop in price.
The exchange, which might even reopen sooner or later, is better off selling at a price well above $33, so after perhaps triggering a drop from $60 to $54 it might even decide to stop temporarily.