This can be a phase from the Lightspeed publication. To learn full editions, subscribe.
As a card-carrying member of the “nothing ever occurs” membership, a lot of my ideas on whether or not or not information has been priced-in may be summarized by this traditional Reddit publish.
Nonetheless, certainly one of my friends on the Lightpeed podcast this week defined why ETH has been slowly gaining floor on solana — and why he believes that pattern could proceed.
I hosted Geoff Kendrick, the pinnacle of digital property analysis at Normal Chartered, to elucidate his Solana thesis. Normal Chartered is a comparatively massive world financial institution based mostly out of the UK. This Solana report was the financial institution’s first, in what could also be a present of Solana’s rising relevance to institutional buyers.
The report is bullish on SOL, providing a price goal of $275 by 12 months’s finish and a goal of $500 by the top 2029, but it surely predicts that ETH will outperform SOL within the quick to medium time period. I discovered this shocking given how unhealthy the vibes surrounding ETH have been in current months — and the way principally optimistic issues have been in Solana land.
SOL persistently leads ETH in actual financial worth (a Blockworks Analysis metric for the information and costs that measure demand to land transactions on a blockchain) regardless of Solana having 1 / 4 of Ethereum’s market cap. ETH’s large headwind is its L2s, which have helped the blockchain scale however could also be damaging to ETH’s capability to accrue worth since they tackle quite a lot of buying and selling quantity, however pay comparatively little in charges to Ethereum. Geoff believes the unhealthy vibes surrounding ETH are already “priced in.”
“There was quite a lot of debate in 2024 about, ‘Do [L2s] add or subtract worth?’” Kendrick mentioned. “So, let’s say that quite a lot of that story has already performed out in a relative sense.” He later added: “For Solana, you got here off huge multi-year lows post-FTX, had a comeback in 2023 because of memecoin activity, however now that memecoin buying and selling is post-peak, Solana could underperform Ethereum within the close to time period.”
Kendrick argued that the market trades Solana at a reduction relative to its financial exercise from memecoins as a result of it views memecoin buying and selling as unsustainable. I’d be aware that memecoin exercise has confirmed extra sticky than many might have predicted — pump.enjoyable generated $50 million in income final month, regardless of a dip in utilization — however we’ll should see how all of this performs out over time.
Kendrick’s thesis has been appropriate over the previous month, no less than. The ratio of SOL’s price to ETH’s price is down practically 15%.
Get the information in your inbox. Discover Blockworks newsletters: