Digital asset investment products saw millions in outflows over the past seven weeks as interest in Bitcoin and altcoins in general shrank. However, one altcoin bucked the trend: Solana.
According to European Crypto asset manager Coinshares, institutional investors have been ploughing money into Solana investment products, registering inflows for the ninth week.
Coinshares noted that investors had poured $0.7 million into SOL over the past week through cryptocurrency investment providers. Solana pulled in $26 million on a year-to-date basis, making it “the most loved altcoin amongst investors at present”, the crypto asset manager said in the Monday report.
For comparison, Polygon products saw $8.6 million in outflows, while ether funds faced outflows of $3.2 million.
Bitcoin investment products recorded inflows totalling $3.8 million last week. However, short-bitcoin funds saw outflows for the 19th straight week, with total assets under management (AuM) dropping 48% from this year’s peak.
Coinshares observed that although flow activity dwindled, trading volumes swelled, totalling $2.8 billion last week — roughly 90% above the year-to-date average.
Solana has proven its resilience after enduring the FTX downfall and several network outages over the years without crumbling. The network, managed by an extensive, independent group of validators worldwide, is designed to provide high-speed performance.
Solana has, in fact, been attracting a lot of attention lately after MakerDAO’s co-founder Rune Christensen suggested launching the project’s future native blockchain — under the codename NewChain — using the codebase that underpins the 10th-largest crypto by market cap. MakerDAO is presently the biggest decentralized finance lender. As such, Maker’s endorsement would be a big symbolic win for the Solana ecosystem.
Regulatory Roadblocks
In June, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) labelled SOL as security in bombshell lawsuits against Coinbase and Binance. While the Solana Foundation firmly disagreed with this characterization, SOL was especially hard hit after the news broke, with some exchanges, such as BitStamp, halting trading for the token for its U.S.-based customers.
SOL is trading hands at $20.26 at press time, down 92.59% from the $259.96 all-time high set in November 2021.
