- A prophetic message prompted Hayes to dump SOL for ETH.
- Hayes predicts huge Ethereum price appreciation.
- Solana’s price and DEX volume have strong momentum.
Solana’s ties to FTX and its disgraced former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried led many to believe the project was finished. However, 2023 has been Solana’s year of redemption, particularly from late Q3 onwards, as SOL spiked higher to post an 830% year-to-date gain. Yet BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes has waded in to “foretell” that now is the time to ditch Solana in favor of Ethereum.
Dump Solana Sayeth the Lord
Hayes announced dumping Solana in favor of Ethereum, citing a message from God as the basis for this call. The humorous tweet poked fun at Solana’s history with FTX while glorifying “Archangel Vitalik” as the bringer of an imminent $5,000 ETH price.
Many of the replies mimicked Hayes’ humorous style, conferring religious connotations back, including one X user who took a dig at Ethereum’s unaffordable network costs by commenting, “The Lord does not support such gas fees. Blasphemy I say.” Similarly, Pepe maximalist “z🐸” implied that Hayes had misinterpreted God’s 5,000 figure as the incoming ETH gas price, not a future ETH price.
Common themes throughout were the interpretation of Hayes’ tweet as a sign to stack more SOL and to trade the token long, as well as accusations that Hayes is attempting to manipulate the market.
Although Hayes conveyed a tongue-in-cheek message to dump Solana for Ethereum, looking at the data suggests the momentum is with Solana.
Ethereum Killer?
Data posted by SOL data aggregator platform Step Finance showed that Solana’s 24-hour DEX volume had exceeded Ethereum’s, plus all of its layer 2s combined, indicating strong momentum within the Solana DeFi ecosystem.
In addition, as noted by “The Crypto Cat,” the SOLETH trading pair saw a massive uptick from around 0.011 to as high as 0.041 during this quarter. The Crypto Cat commented that this marks a remarkable turnaround from the recent past when his feed was filled with commentary that Solana “was the worst trash in existence.”
On the Flipside
- Hayes has a history of making bold price predictions and attention-grabbing statements on crypto X.
- Ethereum’s market cap valuation is seven times greater than Solana’s.
- Solana has been criticized for frequent outages, but the network has had 100% uptime since late February.
Why This Matters
While cloaked in humor, Hayes’ tweet underscores the monumental difficulty crypto projects face when trying to unseat Ethereum’s dominant network effect, particularly its vast developer ecosystem. Nonetheless, Solana appears to have shaken off its negative image, demonstrating that investors can forgive when prices increase.
