Having been in the top-10 digital currencies for over a year, the massive hit to Solana’s market cap has knocked Solana down to 15th place.
Embattled FTX and Alameda Research founder Sam Bankman-Fried has strong ties with the blockchain, showing just how toxic his name has become in a mere matter of days.
SBF recently came out batting for Solana in a year of hacks, exploits and dodgy performance issues, calling it the most “underrated token right now” in a Fortune interview.
SBF casts shade on SOL – Source: CoinMarketCap
He’s certainly not without skin in the game.
There’s the little issue of Alameda Research’s balance sheet being packed with SOL tokens, which he has purportedly been using as leverage.
In fact, so large is Alameda’s SOL stash that it represents around 20% of SOL’s circulating supply.
Now that SBF’s empire looks to be in dire straits, there are fears that he is poised to liquidate his entire SOL position.
No wonder the coin is crashing as investors seek to minimise their exposure.
As a venture fund, Alameda Research also participated in a US$314mln funding round for Solana Labs in 2021 and subsequently went to work on building the Solana-based decentralised exchange Serum.
Which brings us to another point: Serum (SRM) is the second-worst performing decentralised finance (DeFi) protocol across the entire cryptocurrency space, having lost over half its value in the past week.