Solana price has started to climb due to the buying frenzy in the cryptocurrency market. On March 14th, the price of SOL increased by approximately 6.70%, reaching $174, its highest level since January 2022. In doing so, the cryptocurrency outperformed the general crypto market, which fell by 0.25% on the same day. However, at the time of writing, SOL was trading at $166.
Why Is Solana Rising?
The recent increase in Solana’s value and the notable gains from the past day coincide with the process created by the associated memecoin project Dogewhatif (WIF). Notably, WIF supporters successfully financed $50,000 against their $700,000 goal. The community used the funds raised to highlight the token logo in the Las Vegas sphere. The price of Dogwifhat (WIF) increased by 25%, reaching a new peak above $3, and achieved a market value of $3 billion after the campaign.
Interestingly, Solana’s price began to rise shortly after the Dogwifhat campaign was announced on March 10th. Since then, the price of SOL has increased by over 24% and gained momentum especially after the successful WIF crowdfunding.
Solana bulls have recently responded positively to the launch of memecoin projects within the blockchain ecosystem, and a recent study by Franklin Templeton noted that during the same period when the network’s popular memecoin project BONK saw a price increase in Q4 2023, a significant percentage of all active addresses’ activities were captured.
Such events contribute to speculation around the potential for increased demand for SOL due to more activity with decentralized applications (DApps) and transactions on the Solana platform. The latest figures for Solana show an increase in network activity. As of March 14th, the total value locked in the Solana network reached its highest level since December 2022, with 23.07 million SOL.
Bitcoin and Solana
Solana’s price increase today is part of the prevailing recovery movement against Bitcoin. In particular, the SOL/BTC pair has increased by 32.45% after reaching a local low of 0.0017 BTC earlier this month. This includes a 6.60% increase on March 14th, indicating that investors were shifting their capital from the Bitcoin market to Solana.
Bitcoin has shown a 65% increase so far this year, and the daily Relative Strength Index (RSI) indicates overbought conditions. Investors might see altcoins that have not yet caught up with Bitcoin as riskier at this point. In contrast, altcoins like Solana and XRP have recently exhibited relatively lower RSI values, suggesting a more balanced market sentiment for these assets.