Solana Drops 5% as FTX-Linked Address Moves SOL to Kraken, Binance

After flying high the last few weeks, it now looks like Solana is headed back down to Earth.

SOL is down almost 6% in the last 24 hours and is currently trading hands at around $39.82, per CoinGecko.

The bearish move comes amid some hefty SOL transfers from FTX-linked Solana addresses, per data from Solana block explorer Solscan. In September, a court approved the liquidation of $3.4 billion worth of crypto assets, including $1.16 billion in SOL, belonging to the FTX estate—the remains of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire after its collapse last year.

The court-approved liquidation plan set a cap of $100 million worth of crypto assets per week, which is likely to produce continued sell pressure on Solana for as long as the process lasts.

The broader picture still remains bullish for the token, as it continues to boast a whopping 23.9% increase over the last week, far outpacing the rest of the top 10 largest cryptocurrencies by market cap.

In the past 24 hours, roughly $10.31 million SOL has been liquidated. Of that sum, more than $7 million were levered-long traders.

The timing of the FTX-linked transfers, though presumably prescheduled, might still raise eyebrows given the token’s sudden rise in price over the last few weeks.

Per Solana block explorer Solscan, the address labeled "FTX Cold Storage #2" sent more than 250,000 SOL tokens, worth roughly $9.8 million at press time, to the crypto exchange Kraken late last night. The transfers were sent first to an intermediary address before arriving at Kraken.

Per analysis tool Breadcrumbs, that same intermediary address also sent roughly 300,000 SOL tokens to addresses labeled as Binance roughly 20 hours ago.

It's unclear exactly who controls the intermediary address in question. Its first on-chain interaction was ten days ago; it received more than 158,000 SOL from FTX Cold Storage #2. The FTX estate did not immediately respond to Decrypt's request for comment.

After getting approval to begin selling or staking assets in September, and tapping Galaxy Digital to oversee that activity, the FTX estate has been busy doing just that. Just last month, the estate staked $122 million in SOL and another $5 million in ETH. Shortly after, more FTX-linked ETH, LINK, AAVE, and MKR were sent to Binance.

As for the rest of the market, it's been somewhat bearish. Heavyweight assets in Bitcoin and Ethereum have dropped roughly 2% overnight. After Solana, the biggest losers are CoinFlux's native token, as well as the popular meme coin PEPE.

Edited by Stephen Graves